miR-21 was up-regulated in hypopharyngeal cancer tissue and FaDu cells.
We firstly analyzed the expression level of miR-21 in hypopharyngeal cancer tissues samples and hypopharyngeal cancer cell line FaDu cells, with a normal cell line (293T cell line) as control. qRT-PCR showed that miR-21 expression was both significantly increased in hypopharyngeal cancer tissues samples (Fig. 1a) and FaDu cells compared to control (Fig. 1b).