Abstract

We aimed at investigating effects of long non-coding RNA maternally expressed 3 (MEG3) on the proliferation, cell cycle and apoptosis of bladder urothelial carcinoma cells and regulatory relationships among lncRNA MEG3, miR-96 and α-tropomyosin 1 (TPM1). Human clinical data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) which contains bladder urothelial carcinoma tissues and adjacent tissues were used for analysis. The expression profiles of MEG3, miR-96, TPM1, cell cycle-related genes and apoptosis-related genes were examined by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) and western blot. Regulating relationship among MEG3, miR-96 and TPM1 was confirmed by dual luciferase reporter assay. MTT assay and flow cytometry were performed to observe cell proliferation, cell cycle and apoptosis. The effects of lncRNA MEG3 on bladder urothelial carcinoma were confirmed both in vivo and in vitro. The mRNA expression and protein expression of MEG3, TPM1 were down-regulated in carcinoma tissues, whereas miR-96 expression was up-regulated. MEG3 overexpression resulted in miR-96 downregulation along with TPM1 upregulation, which inhibited cell proliferation and cell cycle but promoted cell apoptosis of bladder urothelial carcinoma cells in vitro, and at the same time inhibited tumor growth in vivo. In this process, expressions of apoptosis-related protein BCL2 associated X (Bax), cleaved-caspase 3 was up-regulated, whereas apoptosis regulator protein (Bcl-2) expression was suppressed when MEG3 was overexpressed, and cell cycle-related protein Cyclin D1 was down-regulated. LncRNA MEG3 low-expression promotes the proliferation and inhibits apoptosis of bladder urothelial carcinoma cells by regulating miR-96 along with TPM1.