Silencing of liver-specific microRNA-122 (miR-122) aggravates CCl4-induced liver injury

Hepatic fibrosis represents a complex response to chronic liver injury. Recent studies revealed micro RNAs as important and tissue-specific gene-regulatory mediators, associated with distinct diseases. MiR-122 is a liver-specific micro RNA (Landgraf et al. 2007) and was shown to be differenzially expressed in hepatocellular carcinoma (Gramantieri et al. 2007). Our aim now was to determine the role of miR-122 during experimental liver injury. Hence we administered an LNA-antimiR oligonucleotide (antimiR-122) that antagonizes miR-122 and leads to derepression of its target genes (Elmén et al. 2008). We analyzed 24…