Mitochondrial calcium uniporter as a target of microRNA-340 and promoter of metastasis via enhancing the Warburg effect

BACKGROUND: A shift from oxygen phosphorylation to aerobic glycolysis was known as the Warburg effect and a characteristic of cancer cell metabolism facilitating metastasis. Mitochondrial calcium uniporter (MCU), a key ion channel that mediates Ca(2+) uptake into mitochondria, was found to promote cancer progression and metastasis. However, its explicit role in shifting metabolism of breast cancer cells has not been defined. METHODS: We evaluated MCU overexpression or knock-down on migration, invasion and glucose metabolismin breast cancer cells. Mitochondrial Ca(2+) dynamics were monitored with Rhod-2 fluorescence imaging. Luciferase reporter assay was used to confirm the interaction between miR-340 and 3’-untranslated region (3’-UTR) of MCU gene. Mouse models of lung metastasis were used to determine whether gain-/loss-of-MCU impacts metastasis. MCU expression was assessed in 60 tumor samples from breast cancer patients by immunohistochemistry (IHC). RESULTS: Knockdown of MCU in MDA-MB-231 cells significantly reduced cell migration and invasion in vitro and lung metastasis in vivo; whereas overexpression of MCU in MCF-7 cells significantly increased migration and invasion in vitro and lung metastasis in vivo. Overexpression of MCU promoted lung metastasis by enhancing glycolysis, whereas suppression of MCU abolished this effect. Moreover, a novel mechanism was identified that MCU was a direct target of microRNA-340, which suppressed breast cancer cell motility by inhibiting glycolysis. Consistently, significantly increased MCU protein was found in metastatic breast cancer patients. CONCLUSIONS: We identified a novel mechanism that upregulated MCU promotes breast cancer metastasis via enhancing glycolysis, and that this process is posttranscriptionally and negatively regulated by microRNA-340.