Long noncoding RNA PANDAR promotes progression and predicts poor prognosis via upregulating ROCK1 in prostate cancer.

OBJECTIVE

Recent researches have proved that long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) play an important role in tumorigenesis. In this research, lncRNA PANDAR was explored to identify the role it played in the development of prostate cancer and how it achieves.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

Real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) was utilized to detect PANDAR expression in both prostate cancer tissue samples and cells. Moreover, the associations between expression level of PANDAR and patients' disease-free survival rate were studied respectively. Then wound healing assay and transwell assay were conducted. Furthermore, RT-qPCR and Western blot assay were used to explore the underlying mechanism.

RESULTS

By comparison with PANDAR expression in adjacent tissues, PANDAR expression level was significantly higher in prostate cancer samples, which was closely associated with patients' disease-free survival time. Moreover, after PANDAR was upregulated, cell migration and cell invasion capacities of prostate cancer cells were enhanced in vitro. In addition, after overexpression of PANDAR, the mRNA and protein expression of ROCK1 was upregulated, respectively. Furthermore, it was found that ROCK1 expression was positively correlated to PANDAR expression in prostate cancer tissues.

CONCLUSIONS

Results above suggest that PANDAR could enhance cell migration and invasion of prostate cancer by upregulating ROCK1, which may offer a potential therapeutic target in prostate cancer.