Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is one of the most lethal malignancies. Recently, many kinds of microRNAs (miRNAs) have been found to play a significant role in development of PDAC. However, there is no investigation about expression and function of miR-7-5p in PDAC. In this study, we found that miR-7-5p was down-regulated in PDAC tissues and its low expression level indicated a poor survival rate for PDAC patients. By bioinformatic analysis, we found that miR-7-5p targeted SOX18, and there was a negative correlation between them in PDAC tissues. Then luciferase reporter and western blot assays were used to verify the binding of miR-7-5p on SOX18 3'UTR. Cell function assays demonstrated that miR-7-5p inhibited proliferation, migration and invasion of PANC-1 cells by targeting SOX18. The nude mouse tumorigenicity assay further proved that miR-7-5p targeted SOX18 to inhibit pancreatic cancer growth in vivo. In order to further understand the mechanism, we applied a transcription factor prediction tool to explore the underlying targets that transcripted by SOX18, and the result indicated that SOX18 was a transcription factor for gp130 (a subunit of IL-6 receptor), and ChIP assays was performed to prove this prediction. Furthermore, we detected the suppression of gp130/JAK2/STAT3 signaling pathway after silencing SOX18 in PANC-1 cells, which demonstrated the transcriptional activation role of SOX18 on gp130. Thus, our present study revealed that miR-7-5p targeted SOX18 to inhibit gp130/JAK2/STAT3 signaling pathway to exert its suppressing role in PDAC. (C) 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.