Among these candidate targets, MMP14 and Snail were predicted as novel targets of miR-22 and were selected as our target genes in GC for further study, as they have been shown to associate with prognosis and metastasis in patients with GCs.23, 24, 29, 30 To determine whether MMP14 and Snail are direct targets of miR-22, wild-type and mutant 3′ untranslated regions (3′UTRs) of MMP14 and Snail were cloned into the downstream of firefly luciferase coding region in pGL-3 luciferase reporter vector. Here, SNAI1 is linked to gastric cancer.