Synergistic antitumor activity of resveratrol and miR-200c in human lung cancer

MicroRNAs have emerged as promising molecular factors with potential for clinical applications in cancer diagnosis and therapy. In the present study, we demonstrated that the level of miR-200c in lung cancer tissues was lower than that in normal tissues using real-time PCR. To further investigate the effects of miR-200c expression in lung cancer cells, we upregulated miR-200c levels in H460 cells using transfection. We found that the percentage of apoptotic cells was higher in the cells expressing miR-200c than that in the untransfected cells. Furthermore, the antitumor activities of miR-200c were demonstrated in vivo. Notably, we confirmed that reservatol (RESV) showed stronger antitumor activities in miR-200c-positive cells than in miR-200c-negative cells. Finally, we demonstrated that expression of miR-200c in H460 cells suppressed cell growth by targeting RECK, followed by activation of the JNK signaling pathway and ER stress. Collectively, these data show that miR-200c expression sensitizes H460 cells to RESV and this is likely due to RECK expression.