Osteosarcoma is the most common and highly aggressive bone neoplasm often occurs among adolescents and young people. In despite of the major advances in the treatment, the overall survival of osteosarcoma patients remains poor. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been identified as key regulators involved in tumorigenesis and progression of osteosarcoma. However, the exact roles and mechanisms of lncRNAs in osteosarcoma remain unclear. In this study, the functions and underlying molecular mechanisms of a novel lncRNA, ITGB2 antisense RNA1 (ITGB2-AS1) were investigated in osteosarcoma. The expression levels of ITGB2-AS1 were up-regulated in osteosarcoma tissue samples and cell lines determined by qRT-PCR assay. Osteosarcoma patients with high ITGB2-AS1 expression had a significantly poor prognosis. In addition, knockdown of ITGB2-AS1 inhibited the proliferation and induced apoptosis of osteosarcoma cells using MTT assay and flow cytometry detection. Furthermore, wound healing and transwell invasion assay revealed that depletion of ITGB2-AS1 suppressed the migration and invasion abilities of osteosarcoma cells. Molecular mechanism study indicated that ITGB2-AS1 inhibition impaired Wnt/β-catenin signalling pathway in osteosarcoma cells. Taken together, our study suggested that ITGB2-AS1 played critical roles in the development and progression of osteosarcoma via Wnt/β-catenin signalling, indicating that ITGB2-AS1 might be a valuable diagnostic biomarker and potential anticancer therapeutic target for osteosarcoma.
Keywords: ITGB2-AS1; LncRNA; Wnt/β-catenin signalling; invasion; migration; osteosarcoma; proliferation.