Emerging evidence has shown that the long noncoding RNA urothelial carcinoma–associated 1 (UCA1) plays a tumor‐promoting role in colorectal cancer, while miR‐28‐5p shows tumor‐inhibitory activity in several tumor types. However, the mechanisms both of these in colon cancer progression are still unknown. In this work, the detailed roles and mechanisms of UCA1 and its target genes in colon cancer were studied. The results showed that UCA1 was upregulated in colon cancer tissues when compared with the adjacent nonhumorous tissues, as well as in the various colon cancer cell lines, but the expression of miR‐28‐5p showed an opposite trend. Furthermore, a high UCA1 level in colon cancer tissues is positively associated with the tumor size and advanced tumor stages. Functional assays revealed that both UCA1 knockdown and miR‐28‐5p overexpression could inhibit colon cancer cell growth and migration. Further mechanistic studies indicated that UCA1 knockdown played tumor suppressive roles in SW480 and HT116 cells through binding with miR‐28‐5p. We also, for the first time, identified HOXB3 as the target gene of miR‐28‐5p and that HOXB3 overexpression could mediate the functions of UCA1 in cell proliferation and migration of colon cancer cells. In conclusion, our data provided evidence for the regulatory network of UCA1/miR‐28‐5p/HOXB3 in colon cancer, suggesting that UCA1, miR‐28‐5p, and HOXB3 are the potential targets for colon cancer therapy.

Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

We aimed to explore biomarkers associated with diagnosis and prognosis of colorectal cancer. Differentially expressed protein (DEP) genes were obtained and validated. Moreover, co-expressed genes were screened and their prognostic value was evaluated. In addition, miRNAs that were negatively correlated with DEP genes were identified and used to construct a competitive endogenous RNA network. Furthermore, a support vector machine model was built using DEP genes, and a receiver operating characteristic curve was implemented to confirm its prediction performance. The results showed that only one DEP gene, CCL26, was obtained. Moreover, 43 genes co-expressed with CCL26 were identified, among which six (AP3M2, DAPK1, ISYNA1, PPM1K, PRR4 and RNF122) were linked with the prognosis of colorectal cancer. Besides, the axis RP11-47122.2/ RP11-527N22.1-hsa-miR-3192-5p-CCL26 was identified as an lncRNA-miRNAtarget gene network. Support vector machine model analysis showed that the area under the curve of CCL26 reached 0.878 based on GEO data and 0.743 based on our protein data. In conclusion, AP3M2, DAPK1, ISYNA1, PPM1K, PRR4, RNF122, CCL26 and hsa-miR-3192-5p appear to be related to the progression of colorectal cancer.