Purpose: MicroRNAs (miRNA) have been documented playing a critical role in cancer development and progression. In this study, we investigate the role of miR-148a in gastric cancer metastasis.

Experimental Design: We examined miR-148a levels in 90 gastric cancer samples by qRT-PCR and analyzed the clinicopathologic significance of miR-148a expression. The gastric cancer cells stably expressing miRNA-148a were analyzed for migration and invasion assays in vitro and metastasis assays in vivo; the target genes of miR-148a were further explored.

Results: We found that miR-148a expression was suppressed by more than 4-fold in gastric cancer compared with their corresponding nontumorous tissues, and the downregulated miR-148a was significantly associated with tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) stage and lymph node-metastasis. Functional assays showed that overexpression of miR-148a suppressed gastric cancer cell migration and invasion in vitro and lung metastasis formation in vivo. In addition, overexpression of miR-148a in GC cells could reduce the mRNA and protein levels of ROCK1, whereas miR-148a silencing significantly increased ROCK1 expression. Luciferase assays confirmed that miR-148a could directly bind to the 2 sites of 3′ untranslated region of ROCK1. Moreover, in gastric cancer tissues, we observed an inverse correlation between miR-148a and ROCK1 expression. Knockdown of ROCK1 significantly inhibited gastric cancer cell migration and invasion resembling that of miR-148a overexpression. We further found that ROCK1 was involved in miR-148a–induced suppression of gastric cancer cell migration and invasion.

Conclusions: miR-148a functions as a tumor metastasis suppressor in gastric cancer, and downregulation of miR-148a contributes to gastric cancer lymph node-metastasis and progression. miR-148a may have a therapeutic potential to suppress gastric cancer metastasis. Clin Cancer Res; 17(24); 7574–83. ©2011 AACR.