Circular RNA PVT1 Promotes Proliferation and Represses Apoptosis of Colorectal Cancer Cells / 中国生物化学与分子生物学报

ABSTRACT

Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are a novel class of long-chain non-coding RNAs. Preceding evidence has showed that circRNAs participate in the development and progression of various tumors. In the present study, we investigated the expression of circRNAs in 5 paired colorectal cancer (CRC) tissues and adjacent normal tissues with circRNA high-throughput sequencing. Totally 477 differentially expressed circRNAs were identified between CRC tissues and non-cancerous matched tissues, which included 252 significantly overexpressed circRNAs and 225 downregulated circRNAs. CircRNA plasmacytoma variant translocation 1 (circPVT1), the most up-regulated expression circRNA, was further confirmed by qRT-PCR in 150 colorectal cancer tissues and matched normal mucosae. Our data revealed that circPVT1 showed a significant up-regulation trend in CRC tissues compared with matched normal mucosae. Similarly, compared with normal colorectal mucosa cells, the expression of circPVT1 in colorectal cancer cell lines was significantly up-regulated (P<0. 05). Functionally, silence with siRNA or overexpression of circPVT1 in colorectal cancer cells was applied to determine the biological functions of circPVT1, including cell proliferation, apoptosis, and cell cycle, etc. The results show that circPVT1 expression significantly attenuated apoptosis, induced replication and promoted proliferation of colorectal cancer cells in vitro. In summary, our findings indicate that circPVT1 plays an oncogenic role in CRC and might be a potential novel target for CRC therapy.