Chemotherapy has been widely used in breast cancer therapy, but the efficacy of chemotherapy is intimately associated with the sensitivity of therapeutic drugs to breast cancer. Docetaxel is a first-line chemotherapeutic drug in breast cancer treatment, but further improvement to its efficacy has thus far proved difficult. microRNAs (miRs) are a class of endogenous, small, non-coding RNAs, which regulate gene expression at the post-transcriptional level. miR-205, a regulator of HER-3, is reported to be a tumor suppressor in breast cancer. In the present study, the reintroduction of miR-205 is shown to inhibit cell proliferation and clonogenic potential, and increase the sensitivity of MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231 cells to docetaxel. miR-205 also shows a synergistic effect with docetaxel in vivo. The present study provides a novel strategy to increase the sensitivity to docetaxel in breast cancer patients.
Keywords: breast cancer; docetaxel; miR-205.