High long non-coding RNA NORAD expression predicts poor prognosis and promotes breast cancer progression by regulating TGF-β pathway

Ke Zhou; Qin Ou; Geng Wang; Wenqi Zhang; Yin Hao; Wenfang Li

doi:10.1186/s12935-019-0781-6

High long non-coding RNA NORAD expression predicts poor prognosis and promotes breast cancer progression by regulating TGF-β pathway

Cancer Cell Int. 2019 Mar 20:19:63. doi: 10.1186/s12935-019-0781-6. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Ke Zhou¹, Qin Ou², Geng Wang¹, Wenqi Zhang¹, Yin Hao¹, Wenfang Li¹

Affiliations

¹ 1Department of General Surgery, The Taihe Hospital Affiliated to Hubei University of Medicine, Shiyan, 442000 Hubei China.
² 2Department of Pathology, Hubei University of Medicine, Shiyan, 442000 Hubei China.

Abstract

Background: To investigate the expression and significance of long noncoding RNA NORAD (lncRNA-NORAD) in breast cancer.

Methods: Q-PCR was adopted to detect the mRNA expression of lncRNA-NORAD in breast cancer and adjacent tissues, survival analysis to compare the low-expression groups with the Kaplan-Meier method. Knockout of lncRNA-NORAD was adopted to observe the effects on the cell proliferation, migration and invasion of breast cancer in vitro and in vivo. The TGF-β/RUNX2 signaling pathway was observed by Western blot after the knockout of lncRNA-NORAD.

Results: Increased expression of lncRNA-NORAD in breast cancer tissues promotes proliferation, invasion and migration of breast cancer cells and correlated with worse prognosis. LncRNA-NORAD activated TGF-β/RUNX2 signaling pathway in breast cancer cells.

Conclusions: These results strongly suggested that lncRNA-NORAD might play an important role in breast cancer progression and potentially be a new therapeutic target.

Keywords: Breast cancer; LncRNA-NORAD; TGF-β.