Research Paper Volume 16, Issue 3 pp 2736—2752
circ_0039787 promotes cervical cancer cell tumorigenesis by regulation of the miR-877-5p-KRAS axis
- 1 Department of Radiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Ningbo University, Ningbo, Zhejiang, China
- 2 Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Yinzhou No. 2 Hospital of Ningbo, Ningbo, Zhejiang, China
Received: April 12, 2023 Accepted: December 12, 2023 Published: February 2, 2024
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.205508How to Cite
Copyright: © 2024 He et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Circular RNA (circRNA) is a novel type of RNA that plays an important role in the occurrence and development of many malignant tumors. However, the potential regulatory role and molecular mechanisms of circRNAs in cervical cancer (CC) are still not clear. Here, we explored circRNAs associated with CC from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) datasets GSE113696 and GSE102686. We initially identified circ_0039787, which is derived from exons 2 to 3 of the C16orf70 gene. We observed that circ_0039787 is mainly located in the cytoplasm and is more stable than its linear counterpart, C16orf70. circ_0039787 is significantly upregulated in CC tissues and cells. In addition, functional gain and loss experiments demonstrated that circ_0039787 promotes the proliferation, migration, and invasion of CC cells in vitro and the growth of CC tumors in vivo. Mechanistically, circ_0039787 promotes CC tumor progression by competitively absorbing miR-877-5p to alleviate the inhibitory effect of miR-877-5p on Kirsten Rat Sarcoma viral oncogene homolog (KRAS) expression. Overall, our results suggest that circ_0039787 could serve as a promising diagnostic biomarker and potential therapeutic target for CC patients.