18-20 However, whether the alterations in the expression of miRNAs induced by HDAC inhibitors are due to changes in histone acetylation levels at their promoters remains to be investigated. Also, whether miRNAs regulate global histone acetylation levels or histone acetylation modifications at particular sites through the targeting of histone acetylation modification enzymes has not PD0325901 been reported in the context of HCC. Our previous studies21 indicate that the expression of microRNA-200a (miR-200a) was down-regulated in the livers of HBX transgenic mice, which were prone to develop HCC, in comparison

with the livers of wild-type mice. In this study, we observed that the expression of the miR-200a was down-regulated in human HCC tissues in comparison with the adjacent noncancerous hepatic tissues. Intriguingly, the histone H3 acetylation level at the mir-200a promoter was also down-regulated in human HCC samples. Further analysis demonstrated that HDAC4/Sp1 contributed to the down-regulation of miR-200a through the deacetylation of histone H3 at its promoter. We also determined that miR-200a repressed HDAC4 expression. Therefore, miR-200a ultimately increased its own transcription. Through targeting HDAC4, miR-200a increased the global level of acetyl-histone H3 and induced aberrant histone acetylation at its own promoter

and the p21WAF/Cip1 promoter. ChIP, chromatin immunoprecipitation; BTK inhibitor HCC, hepatocellular carcinoma; HDAC, histone deacetylase; miRNA, microRNA; miR-200a, microRNA-200a; mRNA, messenger RNA; qRT-PCR, quantitative reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction; siRNA, small interfering RNA; SIRT1, silent

information regulator 1; UTR, untranslated region. For a description of the materials and methods used in this study, see the Supporting Information. To determine whether the miR-200a was differentially expressed in human primary liver cancer, the expression level of miR-200a was examined using real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in 41 pairs of human HCC tissues and pair-matched adjacent noncancerous hepatic tissues. The miR-200a levels were significantly decreased in HCC tissues in comparison with the adjacent noncancerous hepatic tissues (Fig. 1; P < 0.01 by Wilcoxon signed-rank test). To determine how transcription of mir-200a was controlled, we investigated Oxymatrine whether DNA methylation may contribute to the down-regulation of the miR-200a. We identified a 2500–base pair cytosine–guanine dinucleotide (CpG) island in the mir-200a promoter, just as in other reports.22 We performed bisulfite sequencing analysis in five pairs of human tissue samples from Fig. 1 in which the miR-200a level decreased more than 90% as compared with matched controls. We found these regions hypermethylated in both HCC and matched controls (Supporting Fig. 1), thus indicating DNA methylation is less likely to regulate miR-200a expression in HCC.