Investigation of Mir-96 expression in human oral cancer cells

Oral cancer is one of the types of head and neck cancers. Five percent of all cancers occur in the head and neck, and almost half of them occur in the oral cavity. Many factors are involved in the onset and progression of oral cancer. One of the most important factors is miRNA and also its mechanism. Mir-96 is, directly and indirectly, involved in apoptosis, proliferation, and invasion of tumors. Therefore, investigation of its role and relation to oral cancer can improve the process of diagnosis and then treatment in patients. In this study, 30 oral tumor and 30 their marginal samples were collected and histo-phatological study were done. Then, RNA extraction was performed, specific primers were designed for Mir-96 and U6 and the expression of Mir-96 was evaluated by a real-time PCR reaction. The results showed that Mir-96 expression in tumor samples was 3.44 times higher than normal ones (p < 0.001). Also, the level of Mir-96 expression was significantly higher in the tumor samples of alcoholic patients than non-alcoholic patients (p < 0.01). Also, the level of Mir-96 expression was significantly higher in tumor samples with metastases than those without metastases (p < 0.01). On the other hand, the expression of Mir-96 in the tumor sample of subjects with prior skin cancer was significantly lower than the tumor sample of subjects with no previous history of cancer (p < 0.05). Mir-96 has good potential as a diagnostic and therapeutic marker in oral cancer.