Long non-coding RNA ZEB2-AS1 promotes proliferation and inhibits apoptosis of colon cancer cells via miR-143/bcl-2 axis.

Colon cancer (CC) is the third most common cancer and the fourth leading cause of cancer-associated death in the world. Long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) ZEB2-AS1 was reported to be dysregulated and play important roles in multiple human cancers. However, the expression level and functions of ZEB2-AS1 in colon cancer is unknown. Here, we firstly observed that ZEB2-AS1 was significantly upregulated in colon cancer and predicted a poor prognosis. Functional assays showed that silencing ZEB2-AS1 expression remarkably inhibited proliferation, suppressed cell cycle transition while induced apoptosis in CC cells. In addition, miR-143 was demonstrated to act as a tumor suppressor and predicted as a downstream target of ZEB2-AS1 in CC. Furthermore, bcl-2 was identified as a direct target of miR-143 and ZEB2-AS1 could regulate the expression of bcl-2 via miR-143 in CC. A rescue assay indicated that downregulation of miR-143 partly abolished the suppressive effect of ZEB2-AS1 silencing on CC cells proliferation. Collectively, our results revealed that ZEB2-AS1 was upregualted and functioned as an oncogene via regulating miR-143/bcl-2 axis in colon cancer. These findings suggest that ZEB2-AS1 may serve a novel biomarker in the diagnosis and a potential therapeutic target in the treatment of colon cancer.