LINC01116 Promotes Migration and Invasion of Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma by Acting as a Competed Endogenous RNA in Regulation of MMP1 Expression

Abstract

Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) has increasingly become a worldwide health concern, and its survival rate has not been much improved partially due to a deficiency of precise molecular markers. Dysregulation of LINC01116, a long noncoding RNA sequence, has been observed in several types of cancer. However, the role played by LINC01116 in OSCC has not yet been fully elaborated. This study explored how LINC01116 was involved in the regulation of OSCC progression by analyzing expressions of LINC01116 in OSCC patients. The findings demonstrated upregulation of LINC01116 in OSCC tissues as opposed to regular oral mucosa, and overexpression of LINC01116 was correlated with advanced tumor status. LINC01116 knockdown using shRNA markedly reduced the OSCC cell invasion and migration in vitro. Moreover, the expression of LINC01116 was negatively correlated with that of microRNA-9-5p (miR-9). Luciferase reporter and loss-of-function assays demonstrated that LINC01116 functioned as a competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) that could effectively sponge miR-9, thus regulating the derepression of matrix metalloproteinase 1 (MMP1). Furthermore, we confirmed that LINC01116 knockdown did not affect the expression of MMP1 messenger RNA (mRNA). Collectively, it is demonstrated in this study that overexpression of LINC01116 can promote the OSCC progression. The LINC01116–miR-9-MMP1 axis provides a novel insight into the OSCC pathogenesis and offers potential therapeutic targets against OSCC.

MMP1 Overexpression Promotes Cancer Progression and Associates with Poor Outcome in Head and Neck Carcinoma

“…There are also a few works in HNSCC involving MMP1. These studies mainly indicated that MMP1 was the downstream target gene involving HNSCC invasion and metastasis [35][36][37]. However, these studies have not explained in detail the carcinogenic function of MMP1 itself compared with our results.…”

Peroxiredoxin 3 regulates breast cancer progression via ERK-mediated MMP-1 expression

“…Previous studies showed that MMP-1 is overexpressed in several human cancers [ 25 , 39 – 41 ], and is associated with invasive behavior and tumor progression [ 42 ]. In this study, we observed that PRDX3 contributed to the invasive ability in two breast cancer cell lines, via upregulation of MMP-1, which is due to the activation of ERK/AP1 signaling, as demonstrated by multi-pathway reporter array and western blotting.…”

KLK10/LIPH/PARD6B/SLC52A3 are promising molecular biomarkers for the prognosis of pancreatic cancer through a ceRNA network

“…There is increasing evidence that ceRNA mechanisms are involved in regulating the development of various cancers including pancreatic cancer [ 27 ], thyroid cancer [ 28 ], and oral squamous carcinoma [ 29 ]. However, whether the SMAD4 expression deficiency in PAAD is associated with ceRNAs has not yet been revealed.…”