Xu Youtao, Wang Jie, Qiu Mantang, Xu Lei, Li Ming, Jiang Feng, Yin Rong, Xu Lin
Department of Thoracic Surgery, Nanjing Medical University Affiliated Cancer Hospital, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Molecular and Translational Cancer Research, Cancer Institute of Jiangsu Province, Baiziting 42, Nanjing, 210009, People's Republic of China.
Tumour Biol. 2015 Mar;36(3):1643-51. doi: 10.1007/s13277-014-2763-6. Epub 2014 Oct 31.
Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is one of the prevalent and deadly cancers worldwide, especially in Eastern Asia. The prognosis of ESCC remains poor; thus, it is still necessary to further dissect the underlying mechanisms and explore therapeutic targets of ESCC. Recent studies show that long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have critical roles in diverse biological processes, including tumorigenesis. Some lncRNAs, such as HOTAIR and POU3F3, were reported to play important roles in ESCC. Here, we characterized the expression profile of taurine-upregulated gene 1 (TUG1), a lncRNA recruiting and binding to polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2), in ESCC. In a cohort of 62 patients, TUG1 was significantly overexpressed in ESCC tissues compared with paired adjacent normal tissues, and high expression level of TUG1 was associated with family history and upper segment of esophageal cancer (p < 0.05). Further, in vitro silencing TUG1 via siRNA inhibited the proliferation and migration of ESCC cells and blocked the progression of cell cycle. Therefore, our study indicates that TUG1 promotes proliferation and migration of ESCC cells and is a potential oncogene of ESCC.
食管鳞状细胞癌（ESCC）是全球范围内常见且致命的癌症之一，尤其是在东亚地区。ESCC的预后仍然很差；因此，进一步剖析其潜在机制并探索ESCC的治疗靶点仍然很有必要。最近的研究表明，长链非编码RNA（lncRNAs）在包括肿瘤发生在内的多种生物学过程中发挥着关键作用。一些lncRNAs，如HOTAIR和POU3F3，被报道在ESCC中起重要作用。在此，我们对牛磺酸上调基因1（TUG1）的表达谱进行了表征，TUG1是一种与多梳抑制复合物2（PRC2）募集和结合的lncRNA，存在于ESCC中。在一个62例患者的队列中，与配对的相邻正常组织相比，TUG1在ESCC组织中显著过表达，且TUG1的高表达水平与家族史和食管癌上段相关（p < 0.05）。此外，通过小干扰RNA（siRNA）在体外沉默TUG1可抑制ESCC细胞的增殖和迁移，并阻断细胞周期进程。因此，我们的研究表明，TUG1促进ESCC细胞的增殖和迁移，是ESCC的一个潜在癌基因。
