Molecular screening for nigericin treatment in pancreatic cancer by high-throughput RNA sequencing
Abstract Background Nigericin, an antibiotic derived from Streptomyces hygroscopicus, has been proved to exhibit promising anti-cancer effects on a variety of cancers. Our previous study investigated the potential anti-cancer properties in pancreatic cancer (PC), and demonstrated that nigericin could inhibited the cell viabilities in concentration- and time-dependent manners via differentially expressed circular RNAs (circRNAs). However, the knowledge of nigericin associated with long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) and mRNA in pancreatic cancer (PC) has not been studied. This study is to elucidate the underlying mechanism from the perspective of lncRNA and mRNA.Methods The continuously varying molecules (lncRNAs and mRNAs) were comprehensively screened by high-throughput RNA sequencing.Results Our data showed that 76 lncRNAs and 172 mRNAs were common differentially expressed in the nigericin anti-cancer process. Subsequently, the bioinformatics analyses, including GO and KEGG analysis, coding and non-coding co-expression network, cis- and trans-regulation predictions and PPI network, were applied to annotate the potential regulatory mechanisms among these coding and non-coding RNAs during the nigericin anti-cancer process.Conclusion These findings provided new insight into the molecular mechanism of nigericin toward cancer cells, and suggested a possible clinical application in PC.