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Research Paper|Volume 12, Issue 13|pp 13338—13353

circRNA_100859 functions as an oncogene in colon cancer by sponging the miR-217-HIF-1α pathway

Peng Zhou1,2, Wei Xie1, Hua-Lin Huang3,4, Rong-Qi Huang3,4, Chao Tian3,4,6, Hong-Bo Zhu5, Ying-Huan Dai2, Zhi-Yuan Li1,3,4,6,7,8
  • 1Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, China
  • 2Department of Pathology, The Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, China
  • 3CAS Key Laboratory of Regenerative Biology, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China
  • 4Guangzhou Regenerative Medicine and Health Guangdong Laboratory, Guangzhou, China
  • 5Hepatology Unit and Department of Infectious Diseases, Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China
  • 6School of Life Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China
  • 7GZMU-GIBH Joint School of Life Sciences, Guangzhou Medical University, Beijing, China
  • 8University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
Received: February 4, 2020Accepted: May 30, 2020Published: July 8, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.103438

Copyright © 2020 Zhou et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Circular RNAs (circRNAs) play an important role in cancer development and progression by regulating gene expression. The present study aimed to investigate the function of circRNA_100859 in colon cancer. circRNA expression profiles from a human circRNAs chip were analyzed. The effects of circRNA_100859 on cell proliferation and apoptosis were assessed in vitro and interactions between circRNA_100859 and its micro (mi)RNA and target genes were analyzed. The diagnostic and prognostic significance of circRNA_100859 was also investigated. It was identified that circRNA_100859 was overexpressed in colon cancer tissues and promoted cell proliferation and inhibited cell apoptosis. Additionally, bioinformatics and a dual-luciferase reporter assay confirmed that circRNA_100859 acted as a miR-217 sponge, and miR-217 directly targeted hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-1α. Rescue assays demonstrated that HIF-1α protein and mRNA expression levels and cell proliferation were regulated by the circRNA_100859/miR-217 axis (P<0.05). Furthermore, statistical analysis showed that the circRNA_100859-miR-217-HIF-1α axis was associated with Tumor-Node-Metastasis (TNM) stage, histological grade, and KRAS mutations, and also showed high diagnostic and prognostic value for patients with colon cancer (P<0.05). Therefore, it was concluded that circRNA_100859 functions as an oncogene in colon cancer by sponging the miR-217-HIF-1α pathway. In addition, the circRNA_100859-miR-217-HIF-1α axis may serve as a novel diagnostic and prognostic biomarker for patients with colon cancer.