MicroRNA-450a/PPM1L Axis Contributes to The Malignant Phenotype of Glioma

MicroRNAs play an important role in glioma, and the function of miR-450a in glioma is unknown. We aimed to clarify the role and underlying mechanism of miR-450a in glioma. We analyzed the miR-450a expression and prognosis data of glioma patients from TCGA and CGGA databases. CCK8, colony formation, nude tumor formation, transwell and wound healing assay investigated glioma cells transfected with miR-450a inhibitor growth, invasion and migration, respectively. Bioinformatics and luciferase reporter assay were applied to predict and verify the direct target gene of miR-450a. In this study, we found that miR-450a expression was significantly higher in glioma tissues and cells than the normal tissues and cells, and there is a positive correlation between miR-450a expression and histopathological grade of gliomas. In addition, the glioma patients with high miR-450a expression exhibited poorer prognosis. Downregulation of miR-450a remarkedly suppressed glioma cells growth in vitro and vivo, and inhibited glioma cells invasion and migration. Luciferase reporter assay verified that PPMIL is a direct target of miR-450a. PPM1L silencing partially rescued miR-450a knockdown-induced suppressive effects on glioma cells. Therefore, our data demonstrated that miR-450a/PPM1L axis could mediate the malignant phenotype of glioma, which provided a feasible target for glioma therapy.