Recent studies reveal that long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been shown to have important regulatory roles in cancer biology, and lncRNA MALAT-1 expression is upregulated in some tumors.
However, the contributions of MALAT-1 to bladder cancer metastasis remain largely unknown. In the present study we evaluated MALAT-1 expression in bladder cancer tissues by real-time PCR, and defined its biological functions. We verified that MALAT-1 levels were upregulated in bladder cancer tissues compared with adjacent normal tissues, and MALAT-1 expression was remarkably increased in primary tumors that subsequently metastasized, when compared to those primary tumors that did not metastasize. SiRNA-mediated MALAT-1 silencing impaired in vitro bladder cancer cell migration. Downregulation of MALAT-1 resulted in a decrease of the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT)-associated ZEB1, ZEB2 and Slug levels, and an increase of E-cadherin levels. We further demonstrated that MALAT-1 promoted EMT by activating Wnt signaling in vitro. These data suggest an important role for MALAT-1 in regulating metastasis of bladder cancer and the potential application of MALAT-1 in bladder cancer therapy.
Written by:
Ying L, Chen Q, Wang Y, Zhou Z, Huang Y, Qiu F. Are you the author?
Department of Urology, Renji Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, 1630 Dong Fang Road, Shanghai, 200127, China.
Reference: Mol Biosyst. 2012 Sep 31;8(9):2289-2294.
doi: 10.1039/C2MB25070E
PubMed Abstract
PMID: 22722759
UroToday.com Investigative Urology Section
