Cisplatin is the first-line agent utilized for the clinical treatment of a wide variety of solid tumors including gastric cancer. However, the intrinsic or acquired cisplatin resistance is often occurred in patients with gastric cancer and resulted in failure of cisplatin therapy. In order to investigate if miRNA involves in cisplatin resistance of human gastric cancer, we first screened and compared the expression of miRNAs between cisplatin resistant gastric cancer cell lines SGC-7901/DDP and BGC-823/DDP and their sensitive parental cells by miRNAs microarray and followed by analysis of 2D-GE/MS to identify their target proteins. We found both miR-99a and miR-491 were upregulated while their target gene calpain small subunit 1 (CAPNS1) was downregulated in resistant gastric cancer cells. Dual-luciferase- reporter assays with wild-type and mutated CAPNS1 3'-UTR confirmed their specificity of targeting. Inhibition of miR-99a and miR-491, or overexpress CAPNS1 can enhance cisplatin sensitivity of the resistant cells while transfection of two miRNAs' mimics or si-CAPNS1 in the sensitive cells can induce their resistance. Moreover, our results demonstrated CAPNS1 positively regulated calpain1 and calpain2, the catalytic subunits of CAPNS1, and cleaved caspase3 which further cleaved PARP1 and directly induced apoptosis. Therefore, miR-99a and miR-491 might be work as novel molecules regulate cisplatin resistance by directly targeting CAPNS1 associated pathway in human gastric cancer cells.

Cisplatin is one of the most commonly used drugs in the treatment of gastric cancer. However, drug resistance is a major obstacle for effective treatment and originates in multiple mechanisms such as enhanced DNA repair and anti-apoptosis. Our previous results demonstrated that XRCC1 was a key regulator of cisplatin induced DNA damage and apoptosis. TXNL1, a member of the thioredoxin family, negatively regulated the expression of XRCC1 via the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway. Here, we investigated the role of TXNL1 in the apoptosis induced by cisplatin. Our data showed that the expression of TXNL1 in the cisplatin resistant gastric cancer cell lines BGC823/DDP and SGC7901/DDP cells was significantly lower compared with the cisplatin sensitive cell lines BGC823 and SGC7901. Inhibition of the expression of TXNL1 in BGC823 and SGC7901 cells led to increased resistance to cisplatin induced apoptosis and cell death detected by Tunel and clonogenic assay, respectively. In contrast, over expression of TXNL1 in BGC823/DDP and SGC7901/DDP cells lead to higher cisplatin induced apoptosis and cell death. Moreover, our results demonstrated that the mechanism of TXNL1 regulating cisplatin-induced apoptosis was closely associated with Bcl-2 mediated mitochondria apoptosis pathway. In conclusion, these findings suggest that TXNL1 was a feasible modulator and potential chemotherapeutic target for the cisplatin resistant phenotype of human gastric cancer cells.