Long non-coding RNA PANDAR promotes melanoma cell invasion through regulating epithelial-mesenchymal transition.

Melanoma is a malignant skin tumor and has a poor cure rate because of its high metastatic potential. Overexpression of long non-coding (lnc) RNA PANDAR has been observed in several kinds of cancer, but the function of PANDAR on melanoma is still unclear. Therefore, this study was to explore the mechanism of PANDAR on the occurrence and progression in malignant melanoma. We detected expression of PANDAR in malignant melanoma tissues and cell lines by qRT-PCR and analyzed correlation of PANDAR expression with the patients' prognosis. Furthermore, we investigated the effects of PANDAR on cell viability, migration, invasion, tumorigenesis, and epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) using CCK-8, Transwell, and nude mouse subcutaneous tumor formation model assays and Western blotting analysis, respectively. From the results, we discovered that the PANDAR expression is strikingly upregulated in melanoma tissues compared with paired-adjacent non-tumorous tissues and elevated PANDAR is positively correlated with short overall survival time. The results also demonstrate that knockdown of PANDAR inhibits cell viability, migration, invasion, tumorigenesis, and EMT, whereas overexpression of PANDAR gave opposite results by promoting cell viability, migration, invasion, tumorigenesis, and EMT of melanoma cells. These new findings all illustrate that PANDAR might play a pivotal oncogenic role in the occurrence and development of melanoma, and PANDAR might promote melanoma cell invasion through regulating EMT, providing a potential diagnostic and therapeutic target for melanoma.