Pituitary adenomas constitute one of the most common intracranial tumors. MicroRNAs play an important role in development and progression of pituitary adenomas. In this study, we showed that miR-219a-2-3p was significantly down-regulated in pituitary adenomas cells. Overexpression of miR-219a-2-3p suppressed the proliferation and promoted apoptosis of pituitary adenomas cells. After bioinformatics analysis, we found that MDM2 was one of the downstream targets of miR-219a-2-3p. Further researches showed that miR-219a-2-3p could reduce the protein level of MDM2 by binding to the 3'-UTR of MDM2 and promoted p53 expression. Then, we overexpressed both miR-219a-2-3p and MDM2 in the same group and found that it could counteract the effect of overexpressing miR-219a-2-3p alone on proliferation and apoptosis of pituitary adenoma cells. Taken together, these results suggested that miR-219a-2-3p regulated the proliferation and apoptosis by targeting MDM2/p53 in pituitary adenomas. Therefore, miR-219a-2-3p may serve as a novel marker and therapeutic target for pituitary adenomas.
Keywords: MDM2; apoptosis; miR-219a-2-3p; p53; proliferation.