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Pancreatic cancer has a poor prognosis, with a 5-year survival rate of only 9%. Thus, there is an urgent need to develop effective cancer therapeutics for this disease. It is expected that nucleic acid therapeutics will be a next-generation cancer treatment. We previously reported that MIRTX - a complementary strand of miR-29b-1-5p (the passenger sequence of miR-29b) - exerts strong anti-tumor effects in colorectal cancer cells. Here we investigated the anti-tumor effects of MIRTX, compared to those of the guide sequence of miR-29b (miR-29b-3p), in pancreatic cancer cells.

We evaluated how treatment with MIRTX and miR-29b-3p affected cell proliferation, cell cycle, apoptosis, and invasion in pancreatic cancer cell lines (Panc-1, SUIT-2, and BxPC-3). We also performed RNA-seq and in silico analyses to explore novel target genes of MIRTX.

Compared to miR-29b-3p, MIRTX strongly suppressed cell proliferation and invasion, delayed cell cycle progression, and induced apoptosis in pancreatic cancer cells. RNA-seq and in silico prediction identified the genes encoding cyclin A2, cyclin B2, and NCAPD3 as potential candidate targets of MIRTX.

MIRTX is a potential therapeutic miRNA in pancreatic cancer cells.