A micro-RNA signature associated with race, tumor size, and target gene activity in human uterine leiomyomas.

Human uterine leiomyomas (ULMs) are the most common neoplasms of women. Many genes are dysregulated in ULMs and some of this dysregulation may be due to abnormal expression of micro-RNAs (miRNAs). In this study, 55 ULMs and matched myometrium were collected from 41 patients for microarray-based global miRNA expression analysis. Of 206 miRNAs examined, 45 miRNAs were significantly up- or down-regulated in ULMs in comparison to the matched myometrium (P < 0.001). The top five dysregulated miRNAs in ULMs are the let-7 family, miR-21, miR-23b, miR-29b, and miR-197. Four polycistronic clusters of miRNAs were either up- or down-regulated, but not in a mixed pattern, indicative of coordinated regulation of these miRNAs. Significance analysis revealed that subsets of miRNAs were strongly associated with tumor sizes and race. By prediction analysis we identified some important tumorigenic genes previously identified in ULMs that may be targeted by the dysregulated miRNAs. HMGA2 was identified as one of target genes of the let-7 family of miRNAs and has been found to be suppressed by let-7 in vitro. This article contains Supplementary material available at http://www.interscience.wiley.com/jpages/1045-2257/suppmat.