Abstract
Gastric cancer ranks as the third most lethal cancer worldwide. Although many efforts have been made to identify novel markers for early diagnosis and effective drugs for the treatment of gastric cancer, the outcome is still poor due to delayed diagnosis and lack of therapeutic options. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play crucial roles during tumorigenesis, and several miRNAs were found to be critical for gastric cancer development, offering promise as therapeutic targets. The results of this study indicate that a novel miRNA, miR-1292-5p, is downregulated both in gastric carcinoma in vivo and in gastric cancer cell lines in vitro. In addition, we showed that attenuation of miR-1292-5p inhibited the growth, migration and invasion of the AGS and SGC-7901 gastric cancer cell lines. Importantly, our results demonstrate that the proto-oncogenic protein DEK is a direct target of miR-1292-5p in gastric carcinoma. Our results therefore demonstrate a tumor suppressor role of miR-1292-5p in gastric carcinoma and hint at the diagnostic and therapeutic potential of the miR-1292-5p/DEK pathway in gastric cancer.