J Cancer 2019; 10(3):672-681. doi:10.7150/jca.28525 This issue Cite
Research Paper
1. Department of Laboratory Diagnostics, The People's Hospital of Yichun City, Yichun, Jiangxi 336000, China
2. Fuzong Clinical College of Fujian Medical University, Fuzhou, Fujian 350025, China
3. Department of Oncology, The People's Hospital of Yichun City, Yichun, Jiangxi 336000, China
4. Department of Nephrology, The People's Hospital of Yichun City, Yichun, Jiangxi 336000, China
5. Department of Infection Management, The People's Hospital of Yichun City, Yichun, Jiangxi 336000, China
6. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Fuzhou General Hospital, Fuzhou, Fujian 350025, China
#Xiaolian Zhang and Lihua Mao contributed equally.
Cervical cancer is the most common and lethal gynaecological tumor. Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have critical roles in various cancers, including cervical cancer. However, few studies investigated the diagnostic value of lncRNAs for cervical cancer. In this study, we investigated the expression pattern of a recently identified lncRNA GIHCG in cervical cancer tissues, cell lines, and serums by qRT-PCR. Furthermore, we explored the roles of GIHCG in cervical cancer using gain-of-function and loss-of-function assays. Our results revealed that GIHCG is up-regulated in cervical cancer tissues and cell lines compared with adjacent normal tissues and normal cervical epithelial cell line, respectively. Furthermore, serum GIHCG is significantly up-regulated in cervical cancer patients compared with healthy controls. ROC curve analysis revealed that serum GIHCG could accurately discriminate cervical cancer patients from healthy controls. Functionally, we found that overexpression of GIHCG promotes cell proliferation, inhibits cell apoptosis, and promotes cell migration of cervical cancer cells. Conversely, depletion of GIHCG inhibits cell proliferation, induces cell apoptosis, and inhibits cell migration of cervical cancer cells. Mechanistically, we found that GIHCG represses the expression of miR-200b. The expression of miR-200b is inversely correlated with the expression of GIHCG in cervical cancer tissues. Moreover, overexpression of miR-200b attenuates the roles of GIHCG in promoting cervical cancer tumor growth in vivo. In summary, this study demonstrated that GIHCG functions as an oncogene in cervical cancer via repressing miR-200b. This study also suggested that GIHCG may be a non-invasive diagnostic biomarker and a potential therapeutic target for cervical cancer.
Keywords: long noncoding RNA, cervical cancer, oncogene, diagnosis, microRNA