It is well known that colon cancer sternness and invasiveness are the main reasons for tumor recurrence and metastasis. MicroRNAs dysregulation can disrupt the balance of cell signaling and growth processes, resulting in cancer proliferation, invasion and metastasis, chemoresistance and so on. In this study, we used colon cancer cell lines HCT-116 and SW-480 to investigate the effects of miR-3120-5p on sternness and invasiveness of colon cancer. We found that the population of CD133 + and Lgr5+ stern cells in both cell lines expressed miR-3120-5p highly, and introducing miR-3120-5p into both cell lines increased the population of cancer stem cells, as measured by flow cytometry, qRT-PCR and sphere formation assays. Transwell assay, Gelatin zymography assay and Western blot assays further revealed that miR-3120-5p promotes colon cancer cells invasive ability. By the target prediction algorithm TargetScan, we found Axin2 is a potential target for miR-3120-5p, and luciferase reporter assay demonstrated that miR-31205p reduces Axin2 expression. Transfection of siRNA against Axin2 into colon cancer cells promoted the sternness and invasion of colon cancer cells. Furthermore, Axin2 overexpression partially reversed the promotion of sternness and invasiveness caused by miR-3120-5p in colon cancer cells. Together, all the results demonstrated miR-3120-5p promotes sternness and invasiveness of colon cancer cells through direct targeting of Axin2. They suggest that antago-miR-3120-5p plays important roles on treatment strategy for colon cancer. (C) 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.