Circular RNA cTFRC acts as the sponge of MicroRNA-107 to promote bladder carcinoma progression.

BACKGROUND: Circular RNA (circRNA) represents a broad and diverse endogenous RNAs that can regulate gene expression in cancer. However, the regulation and function of bladder cancer (BC) circRNAs remain largely unknown.

METHODS: Here we generated circRNA microarray data from three BC tissues and paired non-cancerous matched tissues, and detected circular RNA-cTFRC up-regulated and correlated with tumor grade and poor survival rate of BC patients. We subsequently performed functional analyses in cell lines and an animal model to support clinical findings. Mechanistically, we demonstrated that cTFRC could directly bind to miR-107 and relieve suppression for target TFRC expression.

RESULTS: We detected circular RNA-cTFRC up-regulated and correlated with tumor grade and poor survival rate of BC patients. Knock down of cTFRC inhibited invasion and proliferation of BC cell lines in vitro and tumor growth in vivo. Furthermore, the expression of cTFRC correlated with TFRC and negatively correlated with miR-107 both in BC cell lines and BC clinical samples. In addition, up-regulation of cTFRC promoted TFRC expression and contributed to an epithelial to mesenchymal transition phenotype in BC cells. Finally, we found that cTFRC acts as a competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) for miR-107 to regulate TFRC expression.

CONCLUSIONS: cTFRC may exert regulatory functions in BC and may be a potential marker of BC diagnosis or progression.