MGCG regulates glioblastoma tumorigenicity via hnRNPK/ATG2A and promotes autophagy.

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common malignant primary brain cancer in adults and has constantly been a focus of research. Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) play important roles in the development of cancers. To illustrate the role of lncRNAs in the development of glioblastoma, high-throughput RNA sequencing was performed to obtain the transcripts using three freshly isolated tumor tissue samples from GBM patients and three normal brain tissue samples from the traumatic brain of patients. Then, a lncRNA, MGCG (MGC70870 is expressed at a high level in glioblastoma), which has not been reported previously in GBM, was found to be associated with the prognosis of patients. The results of bioinformatic analysis showed that MGCG was correlated with autophagy and positively correlated with the expression of the autophagy-related gene ATG2A. The data of mass spectrometry demonstrated that the hnRNPK protein was a direct target interacting with MGCG, and MGCG/hnRNPK promoted the development of GBM by enhancing the translation of ATG2A and autophagy. In conclusion, the present study showed that MGCG has the potential to promote the development of GBM and may become a candidate for molecular diagnostics and treatment of tumors.