Research Paper|Volume 12, Issue 22|pp 23326—23336

The DLG1-AS1/miR-497/YAP1 axis regulates papillary thyroid cancer progression

Yong Huang¹, KeWei Zhang², Yinghua Li¹, Yuyin Dai¹, Hongguang Zhao¹

¹Department of Nuclear Medicine, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun 130021, China
²Department of Thoracic Surgery, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun 130021, China

* Equal contribution

Received: May 30, 2020Accepted: September 5, 2020Published: November 16, 2020

Copyright © 2020 Huang 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

The long non-coding RNA (lncRNA), DLG1-AS1, is upregulated in papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) tissues and cell lines. Here, we found that increased expression of DLG1-AS1 caused lymph node metastasis and advanced tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) stage. DLG1-AS1 knockdown inhibited proliferation, invasion, and migration of PTC cells, and impaired tumorigenesis in vivo in mouse xenografts. DLG1-AS1 functions as a competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) for miR-497. Further investigation revealed that DLG1-AS1 regulated yes-associated protein 1 (YAP1; a known target of miR-497) by competitively binding to miR-497. Moreover, inhibition of miR-497 abrogated the inhibitory effects of DLG1-AS1 depletion on PTC cells. These findings demonstrate that the DLG1-AS1–miR-497–YAP1 axis promotes the growth and metastasis of PTC by forming a ceRNA network.