Moreover, previous studies have found that miRNA-101 inhibits the cell proliferation and augmented apoptosis in gastric cancer, colon cancer and NSCLC by targeting zinc finger E-box binding homeobox 1 (ZEB1), cyclooxygenase-2 (Cox-2), enhancer of zeste homologue 2 (EZH2) and Mcl-1 (Su et al., 2009; Wang et al., 2010; Luo et al., 2012; Han et al., 2018). Here, ZEB1 is linked to malignant colon neoplasm.