MicroRNA-195 inhibits the proliferation of human glioma cells by directly targeting cyclin D1 and cyclin E1

Glioma proliferation is a multistep process during which a sequence of genetic and epigenetic alterations randomly occur to affect the genes controlling cell proliferation, cell death and genetic stability. microRNAs are emerging as important epigenetic modulators of multiple target genes, leading to abnormal cellular signaling involving cellular proliferation in cancers.In the present study, we found that expression of miR-195 was markedly downregulated in glioma cell lines and human primary glioma tissues, compared to normal human astrocytes and matched non-tumor associated tissues. Upregulation of miR-195 dramatically reduced the proliferation of glioma cells. Flow cytometry analysis showed that ectopic expression of miR-195 significantly decreased the percentage of S phase cells and increased the percentage of G1/G0 phase cells. Overexpression of miR-195 dramatically reduced the anchorage-independent growth ability of glioma cells. Furthermore, overexpression of miR-195 downregulated the levels of phosphorylated retinoblastoma (pRb) and proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) in glioma cells. Conversely, inhibition of miR-195 promoted cell proliferation, increased the percentage of S phase cells, reduced the percentage of G1/G0 phase cells, enhanced anchorage-independent growth ability, upregulated the phosphorylation of pRb and PCNA in glioma cells. Moreover, we show that miR-195 inhibited glioma cell proliferation by downregulating expression of cyclin D1 and cyclin E1, via directly targeting the 3'-untranslated regions (3'-UTR) of cyclin D1 and cyclin E1 mRNA. Taken together, our results suggest that miR-195 plays an important role to inhibit the proliferation of glioma cells, and present a novel mechanism for direct miRNA-mediated suppression of cyclin D1 and cyclin E1 in glioma.