LAUSR

Lung cancer has high mortality and incidence rates in which non‐small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the primary type of lung cancer that accounts for about 80%–85% of total patients. It has been demonstrated that microRNAs (miRNAs) are critical in the incidence and progression of tumors, while the role and inner mechanism of miR‐200a‐3p, one type of essential miRNAs, in NSCLC have yet to be revealed. Herein, we investigated the in vitro and vivo pro‐/antiproliferative influence of miR‐200a‐3p on NSCLC cells and utilized bioinformatic programs to further predict the SOX17 gene as miR‐200a‐3p's potential target. A double luciferase reporter gene experiment was performed to confirm that miR‐200a‐3p interacts with the SOX17 3ʹ‐UTR region specifically. On the basis of the results of Western blot and quantitative reverse‐transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT‐PCR), miR‐200a‐3p impacted the posttranscriptional levels of SOX17 rather than influencing its mRNA expression. In the end, we found that overexpressed SOX17 can reverse miR‐200a‐3p's impact on NSCLC cell proliferation and metastasis. Therefore, this study demonstrated that miR‐200a‐3p influences NSCLC cell proliferation and metastasis by modulating the levels of SOX17.