Abstract
BackgroundBreast cancer (BC) is the most frequent malignancy occurring in women worldwide. Emerging evidence indicates that small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs) play a role in tumor development. In the current study, we evaluated expression profiles and functions of snoRNAs associated with BC.MethodsWe analyzed the expression levels of snoRNAs between breast cancer and normal tissues in TCGA database and found that SNORA7B is upregulated in BC. We confirmed this result in clinical cancer tissues and BC cell lines via qRT-PCR. Then, we investigated clinical significance in public datasets and biological function of SNORA7B using a series of in vitro gain- and loss-of-function experiments.ResultsSNORA7B expression was significantly upregulated in samples from patients with BC in both public database and our clinical tissues compared to its expression in normal tissues. Meanwhile, patients with high SNORA7B expression have worse prognosis. Inhibition of SNORA7B expression impaired cell growth, proliferation, migration, and invasion via inducing apoptosis.ConclusionsSNORA7B functions as an important oncogenic snoRNA in BC and may serve as a potential prognosis biomarker for BC.
Highlights
Breast cancer (BC) is the most frequent malignancy occurring in women worldwide
The results demonstrated that H/ACA box small nucleolar RNA 7B (SNORA7B) was up-regulated in all BC cell lines compared with its expression in normal breast cell line MCF10A, while ribosomal protein L32 pseudogene 3 (RPL32P3) was overexpressed in only two cancer cell lines compared to MCF10A (Fig. 2b, c)
Our analysis of the database indicated that the expression of SNORA7B was prominently up-regulated in BC compared with normal tissues, which was verified in our breast cancer clinical specimens and cell lines
Summary
Breast cancer (BC) is the most frequent malignancy occurring in women worldwide. Emerging evidence indicates that small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs) play a role in tumor development. Apart from the traditional function of modifying other RNAs, compelling evidence suggests that dysregulation of snoRNAs can influence the development and progression of various human diseases such as Prader Willi syndrome, some metabolic stress disorders and several types of cancers [10,11,12,13,14]. SNORD50 was reported to have a tumor suppressive role in breast and prostate cancer [16, 17], while SNORA42 was reported to act as an oncogene in lung and colorectal cancer [18, 19]. With the advance of high-throughput RNA-sequencing and microarray-based analysis, snoRNAs are beginning to be considered as plausible disease biomarkers
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