Upregulation of long noncoding RNA RAB11B-AS1 promotes tumor metastasis and predicts poor prognosis in lung cancer

Tiegang Li; Di Wu; Qun Liu; Dedong Wang; Jinbin Chen; Hongjun Zhao; Lan Zhang; Chenli Xie; Wei Zhu; Zhixu Chen; Yifeng Zhou; Soham Datta; Fuman Qiu; Lei Yang; Jiachun Lu

doi:10.21037/atm.2020.04.52

Upregulation of long noncoding RNA RAB11B-AS1 promotes tumor metastasis and predicts poor prognosis in lung cancer

Ann Transl Med. 2020 May;8(9):582. doi: 10.21037/atm.2020.04.52.

Authors

Tiegang Li^{1

2}, Di Wu^{1

3}, Qun Liu^{1

3}, Dedong Wang¹, Jinbin Chen¹, Hongjun Zhao¹, Lan Zhang⁴, Chenli Xie⁵, Wei Zhu³, Zhixu Chen⁶, Yifeng Zhou⁷, Soham Datta¹, Fuman Qiu¹, Lei Yang¹, Jiachun Lu¹

Affiliations

¹ The State Key Lab of Respiratory Disease, The First Affiliated Hospital, The Institute for Chemical Carcinogenesis, School of Public Health, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou 511436, China.
² Institute of Lung Disease, Guangzhou Chest Hospital, Guangzhou 510095, China.
³ Guangzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Guangzhou 510440, China.
⁴ Department of Medical Genetics and Cell Biology, GMU-GIBH Joint School of Life Sciences, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou 510440, China.
⁵ Fifth People's Hospital of Dongguan, Dongguan 523900, China.
⁶ Puning People's Hospital, Puning 515300, China.
⁷ Department of Genetics, Medical College of Soochow University, Suzhou 215006, China.

Abstract

Background: Lung cancer (LC) is one of the leading causes of cancer-related mortality in China and worldwide. Despite the progress in diagnosis and treatment of LC, the prognosis of LC remains poor. Studies have demonstrated that long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play a critical role in carcinogenesis and cancer development.

Methods: Here we examined the expression and potential function of lnc-RAB11B-AS1 in LC both in vitro and in vivo. All experiments in this study were conducted using A549 and PC-9 cell lines according to protocols described in this paper. The clinic characteristics were analyzed using logistic regression, cox model, log rank test, biochemical analysis using qRT-PCR, transfections, nude mice model, and cell biological analysis using Transwell assay, CCK-8 assay, flow cytometry, and rescue experiments, and immunohistochemistry.

Results: The results showed that lnc-RAB11B-AS1 was significantly overexpressed in LC tissues compared to the corresponding non-tumor tissues. Patients with a higher level of lnc-RAB11B-AS1 expression showed a poorer overall survival rate. Functionally, overexpression of lnc-RAB11B-AS1 promotes cell proliferation, migration and invasion abilities of LC cell lines, which suggests lnc-RAB11B-AS1 may play an oncogenic role in LC. lnc-RAB11B-AS1 was located in physical contiguity with RAB11B gene and found positively regulates the RAB11B expression, and the protein levels of RAB11B in LC tissues also found to positively correlated with the level of lnc-RAB11B-AS1 expression. RAB11B silencing partially abrogated lnc-RAB11B-AS1-induced proliferation of the LC cell lines used in this study.

Conclusions: This study provided a novel evidence into the function of lncRNA-driven carcinogenesis. Our findings highlighted the importance of lnc-RAB11B-AS1 and RAB11B in LC progression and indicated that lnc-RAB11B-AS1 may serve as a novel and valuable prognostic biomarker for LC.

Keywords: RAB11B; lnc-RAB11B-AS1; lncRNA; lung cancer (LC); survival.