Research Paper|Volume 12, Issue 20|pp 20523—20539

Exosomal long non-coding RNA UCA1 functions as growth inhibitor in esophageal cancer

Zijiang Zhu¹, Huilin Wang¹, Yao Pang¹, Hongxia Hu¹, Hongyi Zhang¹, Wenhao Wang¹

¹Department of Thoracic Surgery, Gansu Provincial Hospital, Lanzhou, Gansu, China

* Equal contribution

Received: May 26, 2020Accepted: July 21, 2020Published: October 29, 2020

Copyright: © 2020 Zhu 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

Purpose: Esophageal cancer is a highly lethal and broad-spreading malignant tumor worldwide. Exosome-carrying lncRNAs play an essential role in the pathogenesis of various cancers.Results: The results revealed that the expression of UCA1 was decreased in esophageal cancer tissues and plasma exosomes. UCA1 was enriched in exosomes, and exosomal UCA1 was a promising biomarker for the diagnosis of esophageal cancer with 86.7% sensitivity and 70.2% specificity. Overexpression of UCA1 played anticancer roles in esophageal cancer cells through inhibiting cell proliferation, invasion and migration, and colony formation. Also, exosomal UCA1 was taken up by esophageal cancer cells and inhibited the progression of esophageal cancer in vitro and tumor growth in vivo. Furthermore, exosomal UCA1 could directly target miRNA-613 in esophageal cancer cells.Conclusions: The results suggested that exosomal UCA1 inhibits tumorigenesis and progression of esophageal cancer in vitro and in vivo, and might be a promising biomarker for esophageal cancer.Patient and Methods: In this study, we determined the expression of UCA1 in esophageal cancer tissues, plasma exosomes of patients with esophageal cancer. We determined the potential of exosomal UCA1 as a biomarker and its effect on the pathogenesis and progression of esophageal cancer in vitro and in vivo.