Treatment of human airway epithelial Calu-3 cells with a peptide-nucleic acid (PNA) targeting the microRNA miR-101-3p is associated with increased expression of the cystic fibrosis Transmembrane Conductance Regulator () gene

Since the identification of microRNAs (miRNAs) involved in the regulation of Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane Conductance Regulator (CFTR) gene, miRNAs known to down-regulate the expression of the CFTR and associated proteins have been investigated as potential therapeutic targets. Here we show that miR-101-3p, targeting the 3′-UTR sequence of the CFTR mRNA, can be selectively inhibited by a peptide nucleic acid (PNA) carrying a full complementary sequence. With respect to clinical relevance of microRNA targeting, it is expected that reduction in concentration of miRNAs (the anti-miRNA approach) could be associated with increasing amounts of target mRNAs. Consistently to this hypothesis, we report that PNA-mediated inhibition of miR-101-3p was accompanied by CFTR up-regulation. Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) was performed in order to verify the effects of the anti-miR-101-3p PNA on the Calu-3 miRNome. Upon inhibition of miR-101-3p we observed a fold change (FC) expression <2 of the majority of miRNAs (403/479, 84.13%), whereas we identified a list of dysregulated miRNAs, suggesting that specific miRNA inhibition (in our case miR-101-3p) might be accompanied by alteration of expression of other miRNAs, some of them known to be involved in Cystic Fibrosis (CF), such as miR-155-5p and miR-125b-5p.