miR-10a-5p inhibits the migration and invasion of human oral carcinoma cells by targeting PIK3CA through PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway.

Oral carcinoma (OC) is one of the most common malignant tumors in the Chinese population, and cancer metastasis is one of the leading causes of death in OC patients. This study is designed to investigate the correlation between miR-10a-5p and OC cell metastasis. MiR-10a-5p expression was detected by real-time fluorescence quantitative polymerase chain reaction in 93 pairs of OC and adjacent normal tissues, while protein expression was detected using western blot. Transwell assay was performed to assess the metastatic ability of OC cells. In this study, we found that miR-10a-5p expression was low in OC tissues, and the expression level decreased with the increase of histological grade and tumor node metastasis (TNM) stage. Compared with OC tissues without lymph node metastasis, miR-10a-5p was expressed less in OC tissues with lymph node metastasis. OC patients with low miR-10a-5p expression have a shorter 5-year overall survival after surgery. The luciferase gene reporter system confirmed that miR-10a-5p targeted inhibition of PIK3CA expression in OC cells. In addition, miR-10a-5p negatively regulated PI3K, P-AKT/AKT and P-mTOR/mTOR expression and inhibited the invasion and migration of SAS cells in vitro. All in all, the present study indicated that miR-10a-5p was lowly expressed as a tumor suppressor gene in OC tissues and suppressed the metastasis of OC cells in vitro by targeting PIK3CA via the PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]