LncRNA HOXC-AS1 promotes nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) progression by sponging miR-4651 and subsequently upregulating FOXO6.

ABSTRACT

The incidence rate of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is the highest among the malignant tumors of otorhinolaryngology, posing a huge burden to public health. Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) exert an important role in tumorigenesis and the progression of various cancers. The present study found that HOXC-AS1 was highly expressed in NPC and in NPC cell lines, suggesting a critical role of HOXC-AS1 in NPC progression. In addition, the abundance of HOXC-AS1 was negatively correlated with the prognosis of NPC. To molecularly dissect the mechanism of HOXC-AS1 in NPC progression, we knocked down the expression of HOXC-AS1 in HNE1 and C666-1 cells. Then, we employed CCK8, colony-formation experiment and Transwell to investigate how the cell performed when HOXC-AS1 was knocked down. It could be observed that HOXC-AS1 knockdown decreases cell proliferation, migration and invasion, but induces cell apoptosis in NPC. We found that HOXC-AS1 could sponge miR-4651 subsequently binding FOXO6 and inhibiting its expression. Therefore, HOXC-AS1/miR-4651/FOXO6 may form a competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) network that promotes NPC progression. In conclusion, our study demonstrates that HOXC-AS1 promotes NPC progression by sponging miR-4651 and regulating FOXO6 expression, thus providing potential pharmaceutical targets for developing new NPC treatments.