Open Access

ARTICLE

Long Noncoding RNA MEG3 Suppresses Glioma Cell Proliferation, Migration, and Invasion by Acting as a Competing Endogenous RNA of miR-19a

Nan Qin^*1, Gui-Feng Tong^†1, Li-Wei Sun^‡, Xiao-Lin Xu^†

* Department of Electrophysiology, Tianjin Huan-Hu Hospital, Jin-Nan District, Tianjin, P.R. China
† Department of Neurology, Tianjin Huan-Hu Hospital, Jin-Nan District, Tianjin, P.R. China
‡ Department of Oncology, Tianjin Huan-Hu Hospital, Jin-Nan District, Tianjin, P.R. China
1 Nan Qin and Gui-Feng Tong are co-first authors and provided equal contribution to this work.

Oncology Research 2017, 25(9), 1471-1478. https://doi.org/10.3727/096504017X14886689179993

Abstract

Glioma, with varying malignancy grades and histological subtypes, is the most common primary brain tumor in adults. Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are non-protein-coding transcripts and have been proven to play an important role in tumorigenesis. Our study aims to elucidate the combined effect of lncRNA maternally expressed gene 3 (MEG3) and microRNA-19a (miR-19a) in human glioma U87 and U251 cell lines. Real-time PCR revealed that MEG3 was downregulated and miR-19a was upregulated in malignant glioma tissues and cell lines. Bioinformatics analyses (TargetScan, miRanda, and starBase V2.0) showed that phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN) is a target of miR-19a with complementary binding sites in the 3'-UTR. As expected, luciferase results verified the putative target site and also revealed the complementary binding between miR- 19a and MEG3. miR-19a represses the expression of PTEN and promotes glioma cell proliferation, migration, and invasion. However, MEG3 could directly bind to miR-19a and effectively act as a competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) for miR-19a to suppress tumorigenesis. Our study is the first to demonstrate that lncRNA MEG3 suppresses glioma cell proliferation, migration, and invasion by acting as a ceRNA of miR-19a, which provides a novel insight about the pathogenesis of glioma.

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Keywords

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