Copyright
©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Oncol. Dec 15, 2025; 17(12): 113524
Published online Dec 15, 2025. doi: 10.4251/wjgo.v17.i12.113524
Published online Dec 15, 2025. doi: 10.4251/wjgo.v17.i12.113524
Exosomal miR-191 promotes colorectal cancer progression by inducing M2 macrophage polarization and inhibiting ferroptosis
Qing-Yun Zhao, Shou-Jiang Wei, Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, Affiliated Hospital of North Sichuan Medical College, North Sichuan Medical College, Nanchong 637000, Sichuan Province, China
Author contributions: Zhao QY performed the experiments, data analysis and wrote the paper; Zhao QY and Wei SJ conceived and designed the study, reviewed and edited the manuscript; all authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: This study does not involve any human experiments.
Institutional animal care and use committee statement: The animal experiments were approved by the Experimental Animal Ethics Committee of North Sichuan Medical College (approval No. 20240520).
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
ARRIVE guidelines statement: The authors have read the ARRIVE guidelines, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the ARRIVE guidelines.
Data sharing statement: Dataset available from the corresponding author at msmcwsj@163.com.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Shou-Jiang Wei, MD, Professor, Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, Affiliated Hospital of North Sichuan Medical College, North Sichuan Medical College, No. 1 Maoyuan Road, Shunqing District, Nanchong 637000, Sichuan Province, China. nsmcwsj@163.com
Received: August 28, 2025
Revised: September 17, 2025
Accepted: November 6, 2025
Published online: December 15, 2025
Processing time: 106 Days and 1.4 Hours
Revised: September 17, 2025
Accepted: November 6, 2025
Published online: December 15, 2025
Processing time: 106 Days and 1.4 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: We successfully isolated exosomes from colorectal cancer (CRC) cells. Inhibition of miR-191 in CRC cells suppressed M2 polarization of macrophages. After coculture of macrophages, inhibition of miR-191 induced reactive oxygen species production, ferroptosis, and apoptosis of CRC cells. Silencing of exosomal miR-191 from CRC cells prevented M2 polarization of macrophages, and weakened CRC development by inducing ferroptosis in macrophages. Exosomal miR-191 also accelerated cancer progression in CRC nude mice by promoting M2 polarization of macrophages.