Elevated expression level of long noncoding RNA MALAT-1 facilitates cell growth, migration and invasion in pancreatic cancer

Abstract

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most aggressive solid malignancies with a dismal survival rate. Recent studies have shown that high expression levels of long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) metastasis-associated lung adenocarcinoma transcript-1 (MALAT-1) correlate with several solid tumors. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms and its clinical significance in pancreatic cancer remain to be elucidated. In the present study, our results showed that MALAT-1 expression levels were upregulated in pancreatic cancer tissues compared with adjacent noncancerous controls. Consistently, higher expression level of MALAT-1 was found in all seven pancreatic cancer cell lines relative to the human pancreatic ductal epithelial cell. Further function analysis revealed that downregulation of MALAT-1 could inhibit tumor cell proliferation and decrease cell migration and invasion in vitro. The underlying mechanisms are possibly involved in inducing G2/M cell cycle arrest, promoting cell apoptosis, suppressing epithelial-mesenchymal transition and reducing cancer stem-like properties. In conclusion, this study indicated that MALAT-1 may serve as an oncogenic lncRNA that is involved in malignancy phenotypes of pancreatic cancer. Therefore, it may be used as a potential therapeutic target.

ALKBH5 Inhibits Pancreatic Cancer Motility by Decreasing Long Non-Coding RNA KCNK15-AS1 Methylation

“…Mounting evidence has demonstrated that lncRNAs play important roles in cancer cell proliferation, apoptosis, and metastasis. Although HOTAIR [4], HOTTIP [5], and MALAT1 [6] have been reported in pancreatic cancer studies, the mechanisms by which lncRNAs regulate pancreatic cancer require further exploration.…”

LncRNAs and cancer

“…MALAT1 is highly expressed in pancreatic cancer and has been found to correlate with clinical stage, tumor size, lymph node metastasis and distant metastasis in pancreatic cancer patients (29). Downregulation of MALAT1 inhibits tumor cell proliferation and decreases cell migration and invasion in vitro (30). These underlying mechanisms are involved in inducing G 2 /M cell cycle arrest, promoting cell apoptosis, suppressing epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and reducing cancer stem-like properties (30).…”

“…Downregulation of MALAT1 inhibits tumor cell proliferation and decreases cell migration and invasion in vitro (30). These underlying mechanisms are involved in inducing G 2 /M cell cycle arrest, promoting cell apoptosis, suppressing epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and reducing cancer stem-like properties (30). LncRNA highly up-regulated in liver cancer exhibits similar functions to MALAT1 (31).…”

Downregulation of long non-coding RNA MALAT1 induces tumor progression of human breast cancer through regulating CCND1 expression

“…Among them, most lncRNAs are expressed at a low level, and share poor primary sequence similarity over evolution15. Long non-coding RNA metastasisassociated lung adenocarcinoma transcript 1 (MALAT1), is outstanding due to its evolutionarily high conservation and abnormal expression within many different malignancies [16][17][18][19]. In breast cancer, it has been shown that MALAT1 is downregulated in breast cancerous tissues and breast cancer cell lines, and could modulate the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) program via phosphatidylinositide-3 kinase-AKT pathways [20].…”