%0 Journal Article %T Aberrant Expression of miR-20a and miR-203 in Cervical Cancer %J Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention %I West Asia Organization for Cancer Prevention (WAOCP), APOCP's West Asia Chapter. %Z 1513-7368 %D 2013 %\ 04/01/2013 %V 14 %N 4 %P 2289-2293 %! Aberrant Expression of miR-20a and miR-203 in Cervical Cancer %K miR-20a %K miR-203 %K cervical cancer %K therapeutic agents %R %X MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small, non-coding RNAs that are critical regulators of various diseases. MicroRNA-20a (miR-20a) and microRNA-203 (miR-203) have previously shown significant alteration in a range of cancers.In this study, the expression levels of miR-20a and miR-203 in 100 cervical cancer tissues were detected byqRT–PCR and compared to patient matched-nontumor cervical tissues. Correlations between expression leveland clinicopathologic characteristics of cervical cancer were also analyzed. Finally, we studied the effect of miR-20a and miR-203 on cell proliferation in cervical cancer cell lines by MTT. We found that the expression levelof miR-20a (P<0.001) was significantly higher in cervical cancer patients than in healthy controls, while thatof miR-203 (P<0.001) was lower. Aberrant expression of miR-20a was correlated with lymph node metastasis(LNM), histological grade and tumor diameter, but down-regulated miR-203 was correlated with LNM only.Furthermore, we found that over-expression of miR-203 decreased cell proliferation, while reduction of miR-20a also prevented tumor progression. Our results support the involvement of miR-20a and miR-203 in cervicaltumorigenesis. We propose that miRNAs might be used as therapeutic agents for cervical cancer. %U https://journal.waocp.org/article_27616_1854fea03bc802f20297115916257d00.pdf