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The lncRNA UNC5B-AS1 promotes proliferation, migration, and invasion in papillary thyroid cancer cell lines

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Abstract

The incidence of thyroid cancer detection is continually improving worldwide with the spread of diagnostic imaging and surveillance. Although we have made great progress, there are still unknown mechanisms of papillary thyroid cancer. We found that UNC5B-AS1 is a potential oncogene in thyroid cancer. Therefore, our study aimed to investigate the biological functions of the lncRNA UNC5B-AS1 in papillary thyroid cancer. As a result, RNA-seq data on primary papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) in the TCGA database were obtained. RT-qPCR was performed to evaluate the expression levels in thyroid tissue. We then analysed the expression level of UNC5B-AS1 and its association with clinicopathologic characteristics in the TCGA database. We downregulated UNC5B-AS1 using small interfering RNA and carried out assays of cell proliferation, colony formation, migration and invasion to explore the function of UNC5B-AS1 in PTC cell lines (TPC1 and BCPAP). These results suggested that the lncRNA UNC5B-AS1 was significantly upregulated in both the TCGA cohort and our tissue cohort. Upregulated UNC5B-AS1 correlated with lymph node metastasis (P < 0.001), tumor size (P = 0.002) and histological type (P = 0.013). We also achieved an area under the ROC curve (AUC) of 93.2% for our validated cohort, which was consistent with the AUC of 94.5% for the TCGA cohort, for differentiating between PTC tissues and normal tissues. Downregulating UNC5B-AS1 expression at the RNA level significantly inhibited cell proliferation, colony formation, migration, and invasion in PTC cell lines (TPC1 and BCPAP). This study demonstrated that the lncRNA UNC5B-AS1 plays an important role in tumourigenesis and metastasis of PTC and may be a potential therapeutic target for PTC.

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Data Availability

The data sets supporting the conclusions of this article are included in this article. Raw data are available on the main electronic data storage system of First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University and access can be provided upon request to the authors.

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Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 81372380).

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Author notes

  1. Yinghao Wang and Adheesh Bhandari contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Thyroid and Breast Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, 325000, Zhejiang, People’s Republic of China

    Yinghao Wang, Adheesh Bhandari, Fan Yang, Erjie Xia, Zhihan Yao, Yixiang Jin, Zhouci Zheng, Shixu Lv & Ouchen Wang

  2. Department of Cardiac Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, People’s Republic of China

    Jizhao Niu

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  1. Yinghao Wang
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Contributions

AB wrote the manuscript. AB and YW did the main experiments. JN and EX collected and analysed the raw data. FY, ZY, YJ and ZZ helped to revise the article. OW and SL designed the whole work.

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Correspondence to Shixu Lv or Ouchen Wang.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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This study was subject to approval by the Ethics Committee Board of the First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, People’s Republic of China.

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Written informed consent was issued by the patients for the publication of this study. A copy of the written consent is ready for review by the Editor in Chief of this journal.

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Wang, Y., Bhandari, A., Niu, J. et al. The lncRNA UNC5B-AS1 promotes proliferation, migration, and invasion in papillary thyroid cancer cell lines. Human Cell 32, 334–342 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13577-019-00242-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13577-019-00242-8

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