Abstract
BackgroundBreast cancer is a most common type of cancer in women. Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are involved in cancer development and progression, but their roles and regulatory mechanisms are unclear in breast cancer. Our previous study indicated that has_circ_0001667 (circ_0001667) was up-regulated in breast cancer from the array and might play an oncogenic role, however, the roles of circ_0001667 were not known. This study was aimed to investigate the role and the underlying molecular mechanism of circ_0001667 in breast cancer.ResultsThe real-time PCR result showed that circ_0001667 was overexpressed in breast cancer tissues or cell lines compared to the adjacent normal tissues or normal cells. There was a negative relationship between circ_0001667 levels and the life time of breast cancer patients. Meanwhile, the inhibition of circ_0001667 suppressed the proliferation and metastasis of human breast cancer cells. Further bioinformatical analysis indicated that circ_0001667 sponged miR-125a-5p to regulate TAZ expression by Targetscan and miRanda. Dual luciferase reporter assay and western blotting experiments revealed that circ_0001667 negatively regulated miR-125a-5p expression leading to promoting TAZ expression through Hippo signal pathway in breast cancer cells.ConclusionsThis study uncovered that circ_0001667 was a potential breast cancer prognostic marker, as well as a potential therapeutic target to inhibit breast cancer metastasis by circ_0001667/miR-125a-5p/TAZ axis.
Highlights
Breast cancer is a most common type of cancer in women
Our data showed that circ_0001667 expression was up-regulated significantly in breast cancer tissues when compared to non-tumor tissues (Fig. 1a, b)
We found that breast cancer patients with high levels of circ_0001667 had poor survival ability compared to the patients with low circ_0001667 expression (Fig. 1c)
Summary
Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are involved in cancer development and progression, but their roles and regulatory mechanisms are unclear in breast cancer. This study was aimed to investigate the role and the underlying molecular mechanism of circ_0001667 in breast cancer. Many studies confirmed that circRNAs are involved in the progression and development of breast cancer by regulating gene expression. Liang et al [5] found that circ-ABCB10 promoted breast cancer proliferation and progression through sponging miR-1271. Tang et al [6] revealed that hsa_circ_0001982 knockdown suppressed breast cancer cell proliferation and invasion and induced apoptosis by targeting miR-143. Liang et al [7] clarified CircDENND4C was a HIF1α-associated circRNA promoting the proliferation of breast cancer cells under hypoxia. It is necessary to explore the critical role of circRNAs in breast cancer
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