Regulatory circuit of PKM2/NF-κB/miR-148a/152-modulated tumor angiogenesis and cancer progression

Upregulation of the embryonic M2 isoform of pyruvate kinase (PKM2) emerges as a critical player in the cancer development and metabolism, yet the underlying mechanism of PKM2 overexpression remains to be elucidated. Here we demonstrate that IGF-1/IGF-IR regulates PKM2 expression by enhancing HIF-1α-p65 complex binding to PKM2 promoter. PKM2 expression is regulated by miR-148a/152 suppression. PKM2 directly interacts with NF-κB p65 subunit to promote EGR1 expression for regulating miR-148a/152 feedback circuit in normal cells, but not in cancer cells because of the DNA hypermethylation of miR-148a and miR-152 gene promoters. The silencing of miR-148a/152 contributes to the overexpression of PKM2, NF-κB or/and IGF-IR in some cancer cells. We show that disruption of PKM2/NF-κB/miR-148a/152 feedback loop can regulate cancer cell growth and angiogenesis, and is also associated with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) phenotype, which may have clinical implication for providing novel biomarker(s) of TNBC and potential therapeutic target(s) in the future.