scholarly journals Competing Endogenous RNA of Snail and Zeb1 UTR in Therapeutic Resistance of Colorectal Cancer

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (17) ◽  
pp. 9589
Author(s):  
Nam Hee Kim ◽  
Sang Hyun Song ◽  
Yun Hee Choi ◽  
Kyu Ho Hwang ◽  
Jun Seop Yun ◽  
...  

The epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) comprises an important biological mechanism not only for cancer progression but also in the therapeutic resistance of cancer cells. While the importance of the protein abundance of EMT-inducers, such as Snail (SNAI1) and Zeb1 (ZEB1), during EMT progression is clear, the reciprocal interactions between the untranslated regions (UTRs) of EMT-inducers via a competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) network have received little attention. In this study, we found a synchronized transcript abundance of Snail and Zeb1 mediated by a non-coding RNA network in colorectal cancer (CRC). Importantly, the trans-regulatory ceRNA network in the UTRs of EMT inducers is mediated by competition between tumor suppressive miRNA-34 (miR-34) and miRNA-200 (miR-200). Furthermore, the ceRNA network consisting of the UTRs of EMT inducers and tumor suppressive miRs is functional in the EMT phenotype and therapeutic resistance of colon cancer. In The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) samples, we also found genome-wide ceRNA gene sets regulated by miR-34a and miR-200 in colorectal cancer. These results indicate that the ceRNA networks regulated by the reciprocal interaction between EMT gene UTRs and tumor suppressive miRs are functional in CRC progression and therapeutic resistance.

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Li Deng ◽  
Geng-Ming Niu ◽  
Jun Ren ◽  
Chong-Wei Ke ◽  
Luis Loura

Homeostasis of membrane phospholipids plays an important role in cell oncogenesis and cancer progression. The flippase ATPase class I type 8b member 1 (ATP8B1), one of the P4-ATPases, translocates specific phospholipids from the exoplasmic to the cytoplasmic leaflet of membranes. ATP8B1 is critical for maintaining the epithelium membrane stability and polarity. However, the prognostic values of ATP8B1 in colorectal cancer (CRC) patients remain unclear. We analyzed transcriptomics, genomics, and clinical data of CRC samples from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). ATP8B1 was the only potential biomarker of phospholipid transporters in CRC. Its prognostic value was also validated with the data from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO). Compared to the normal group, the expression of ATP8B1 was downregulated in the tumor group and the CRC cell lines, which declined with disease progression. The lower expression level of ATP8B1 was also significantly associated with worse survival outcomes in both the discovery samples (359 patients) and the validation samples (566 patients). In multivariate analyses, low ATP8B1 levels predicted unfavorable OS (adjusted HR 1.512, 95% CI: 1.069-2.137; P = 0.019 ) and were associated with poor progress-free interval (PFI) (adjusted HR: 1.62, 95% CI: 1.207-2.174; P = 0.001 ). The pathway analysis results showed that the underexpression of ATP8B1 was negatively associated with phospholipid transport, phospholipid metabolic process, and cell-cell adherent junction and positively associated with the epithelial-mesenchymal transition in CRC. Our analysis suggests that ATP8B1 is a potential cancer suppressor in CRC patients and may offer new strategies for CRC therapy.


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Songwen Ju ◽  
Feng Wang ◽  
Yirong Wang ◽  
Songguang Ju

AbstractHypoxic stress plays a pivotal role in cancer progression; however, how hypoxia drives tumors to become more aggressive or metastatic and adaptive to adverse environmental stress is still poorly understood. In this study, we revealed that CSN8 might be a key regulatory switch controlling hypoxia-induced malignant tumor progression. We demonstrated that the expression of CSN8 increased significantly in colorectal cancerous tissues, which was correlated with lymph node metastasis and predicted poor patient survival. CSN8 overexpression induces the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) process in colorectal cancer cells, increasing migration and invasion. CSN8 overexpression arrested cell proliferation, upregulated key dormancy marker (NR2F1, DEC2, p27) and hypoxia response genes (HIF-1α, GLUT1), and dramatically enhanced survival under hypoxia, serum deprivation, or chemo-drug 5-fluorouracil treatment conditions. In particular, silenced CSN8 blocks the EMT and dormancy processes induced by the hypoxia of 1% O2 in vitro and undermines the adaptive capacity of colorectal cancer cells in vivo. The further study showed that CSN8 regulated EMT and dormancy partly by activating the HIF-1α signaling pathway, which increased HIF-1α mRNA expression by activating NF-κB and stabilized the HIF-1α protein via HIF-1α de-ubiquitination. Taken together, CSN8 endows primary colorectal cancer cells with highly aggressive/metastatic and adaptive capacities through regulating both EMT and dormancy induced by hypoxia. CSN8 could serve as a novel prognostic biomarker for colorectal cancer and would be an ideal target of disseminated dormant cell elimination and tumor metastasis, recurrence, and chemoresistance prevention.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 861 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dongsong Nie ◽  
Jiewen Fu ◽  
Hanchun Chen ◽  
Jingliang Cheng ◽  
Junjiang Fu

MicroRNA-34a (miR-34a), a tumor suppressor, has been reported to be dysregulated in various human cancers. MiR-34a is involves in certain epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT)-associated signal pathways to repress tumorigenesis, cancer progression, and metastasis. Due to the particularity of miR-34 family in tumor-associated EMT, the significance of miR-34a is being increasingly recognized. Competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) is a novel concept involving mRNA, circular RNA, pseudogene transcript, and long noncoding RNA regulating each other’s expressions using microRNA response elements to compete for the binding of microRNAs. Studies showed that miR-34a is efficient for cancer therapy. Here, we provide an overview of the function of miR-34a in tumor-associated EMT. ceRNA hypothesis plays an important role in miR-34a regulation in EMT, cancer progression, and metastasis. Its potential roles and challenges as a microRNA therapeutic candidate are discussed. As the negative effect on cancer progression, miR-34a should play crucial roles in clinical diagnosis and cancer therapy.


Cancers ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 735 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kwang Seock Kim ◽  
Dongjun Jeong ◽  
Ita Novita Sari ◽  
Yoseph Toni Wijaya ◽  
Nayoung Jun ◽  
...  

Our current understanding of the role of microRNA 551b (miR551b) in the progression of colorectal cancer (CRC) remains limited. Here, studies using both ectopic expression of miR551b and miR551b mimics revealed that miR551b exerts a tumor suppressive effect in CRC cells. Specifically, miR551b was significantly downregulated in both patient-derived CRC tissues and CRC cell lines compared to normal tissues and non-cancer cell lines. Also, miR551b significantly inhibited the motility of CRC cells in vitro, including migration, invasion, and wound healing rates, but did not affect cell proliferation. Mechanistically, miR551b targets and inhibits the expression of ZEB1 (Zinc finger E-box-binding homeobox 1), resulting in the dysregulation of EMT (epithelial-mesenchymal transition) signatures. More importantly, miR551b overexpression was found to reduce the tumor size in a xenograft model of CRC cells in vivo. Furthermore, bioinformatic analyses showed that miR551b expression levels were markedly downregulated in the advanced-stage CRC tissues compared to normal tissues, and ZEB1 was associated with the disease progression in CRC patients. Our findings indicated that miR551b could serve as a potential diagnostic biomarker and could be utilized to improve the therapeutic outcomes of CRC patients.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianxin Li ◽  
Ting Han ◽  
Xin Wang ◽  
Yinchun Wang ◽  
Qingqiang Yang

Abstract Background: Increasing studies have reported that long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) play critical roles in the initiation and progression of carcinogenesis. However, the underlying regulatory mechanisms of lncRNA related competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) network in colorectal cancer (CRC) are not fully understood.Methods: Dysregulated microRNAs (miRNAs) in CRC samples were screened from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. After that, the key miRNAs were filtered out through a comprehensive assessment of their expression levels and prognostic values. Subsequently, the targeted downstream mRNAs and upstream lncRNAs of the key miRNAs were predicted by using multiple bioinformatic databases. A ceRNA network was constructed by using Cytoscape, and the Gene Ontology (GO) annotation and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analyses were performed on this network using the DAVID database. Ultimately, expression levels and prognostic values of the lncRNAs and mRNAs were evaluated, and a survival related ceRNA network was constructed and visualized by using Cytoscape. In addition, the Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) software package was employed to identify the pathways in which this survival related ceRNA network was enriched. Furthermore, correlations of ceRNA network with immune infiltration level were estimated by the Tumor Immune Estimation Resource (TIMER) databases.Results: In total, 28 dysregulated miRNAs were obtained, and two of them were identified as key miRNAs based on expression levels and prognostic values analyses. Subsequently, a total of three upstream lncRNAs and 309 downstream mRNAs were predicted by using bioinformatic tools, and two key lncRNAs and eight key mRNAs were identified by expression and survival analysis. A ceRNA regulatory network associated with the prognosis of CRC patients was constructed. Furthermore, GSEA analysis indicated the possible association of key mRNAs with CRC onset and progression. Importantly, immune infiltration analysis revealed that the ceRNA network was remarkably associated with infiltration abundance of multiple immune cells and expression levels of immune checkpoints.Conclusions: We constructed a survival related ceRNA regulatory network in human CRC, NEAT1 and XIST are potential prognostic factors that affect CRC onset and progression by targeting miR-195-5p.


BMC Cancer ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zizhen Zhang ◽  
Sheng Zheng ◽  
Yifeng Lin ◽  
Jiawei Sun ◽  
Ning Ding ◽  
...  

Abstract Background The epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) plays a pivotal role in various physiological processes, such as embryonic development, tissue morphogenesis, and wound healing. EMT also plays an important role in cancer invasion, metastasis, and chemoresistance. Additionally, EMT is partially responsible for chemoresistance in colorectal cancer (CRC). The aim of this research is to develop an EMT-based prognostic signature in CRC. Methods RNA-seq and microarray data, together with clinical information, were downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) databases. A total of 244 differentially expressed EMT-related genes (ERGs) were obtained by comparing the expression between normal and tumor tissues. An EMT-related signature of 11 genes was identified as crucially related to the overall survival (OS) of patients through univariate Cox proportional hazard analysis, least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO), and Cox regression analysis. Finally, we established a clinical nomogram to predict the survival possibility of CRC patients by integrating clinical characteristics and the EMT-related gene signature. Results Two hundred and forty-four differentially expressed ERGs and their enriched pathways were confirmed. Significant enrichment analysis revealed that EMT-related signaling pathway genes were highly related to CRC. Kaplan-Meier analysis revealed that the 11-EMT signature could significantly distinguish high- and low-risk patients in both TCGA and GEO CRC cohorts. In addition, the calibration curves verified fine concordance between the nomogram prediction model and actual observation. Conclusion We developed a novel EMT-related gene signature for the prognosis prediction of CRC patients, which could improve the individualized outcome prediction in CRC.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenbiao Chen ◽  
Donge Tang ◽  
Dongxin Tang ◽  
Yong Dai

Abstract Inactivation of tumor suppressor gene played critical roles in the development and progression of human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Zic family member 4 (ZIC4) is transcription factor and plays an important role in the developmental process. However, the expression and biological role of ZIC4 in HCC is poorly understood. Here, bioinformatics analysis based on The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database revealed an aberrant hypermethylation of ZIC4 in HCC. ZIC4 is frequently hypermethylated in promoter region and down expressed in HCC cells and tissues. Functionally, ZIC4 inhibition facilitated the proliferation, migration, invasion, and epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in vitro and in vivo. Conversely, ZIC4 overexpression reduced proliferation and invasiveness of HCC cells. In addition, ZIC4 inhibition rescued the antitumor effect induced by enhancer of zeste homolog 2 (EZH2) knockdown or EZH2 inhibitor. Mechanistically, EZH2 knockdown or EZH2 inhibitor reduced the enrichment of EZH2 and H3K27me3 in ZIC4 promoter region and leading to the upregulation of ZIC4. Altogether, these data indicate that epigenetic silencing of ZIC4 by EZH2 mediated H3K27me3 is an important mechanism in HCC and provide a new therapeutic target for the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma disease.


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