The objective of this study was to analyze and identify pancreatic cancer stem cell-specific microRNAs (miRNAs) and messenger RNAs (mRNAs) to investigate their correlations to cancer stem cell biology.
We used sphere cultivation methods to enrich the stem cell population and analyzed overall miRNA and mRNA expressions using microarray analysis.
Differentially expressed miRNAs including miR-99a, miR-100, miR-125b, miR-192, and miR-429 were detected in pancreatic cancer stem cells. Furthermore, examining both profiles, we obtained 210 miRNAs and 258 stem cell-associated mRNAs that were differentially expressed in the pancreatic cancer stem cells. These miRNAs and mRNAs were further investigated using cross-correlation analysis, which yielded 6 groups of miRNAs and 3 groups of mRNAs. The number of miRNA clusters and mRNA clusters showed high correlation based on microarray result.
Differentially expressed miRNAs in pancreatic cancer stem cells provide insights into possible linkages between clusters of miRNAs and clusters of stem cell-associated mRNAs in cancer stem cells and have broad implications in our understanding of cancer stem cells and cancer stem cell-targeted cancer therapy.
Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text.
From the *Brain Korea 21 Project for Medical Science, Yonsei University College of Medicine; †Life Science and Biotechnology, Yonsei University; and ‡Division of Gastroenterology, Department of Internal Medicine, Yonsei Institute of Gastroenterology, and §Severance Biomedical Science Institute, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.
Received for publication September 14, 2010; accepted April 27, 2011.
Reprints: Si Young Song, MD, PhD, Department of Internal Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine, 250 Sungsanno, Seodaemun-gu, 120-752, Seoul, South Korea (e-mail: sysong@yuhs.ac).
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Supplemental digital contents are available for this article. Direct URL citations appear in the printed text and are provided in the HTML and PDF versions of this article on the journal's Web site (www.pancreasjournal.com).
