SOX21-AS1 is associated with clinical stage and regulates cell proliferation in nephroblastoma

LncRNA SOX21 antisense RNA 1 (SOX21-AS1) dysregulated in many types of human cancer, and functioned as tumor suppressor or promoter depending on tumor types. However, there was no report about the role of SOX21-AS1 in nephroblastoma. In the present study, we first found that SOX21-AS1 expression was elevated in nephroblastoma tissues and cell lines compared with adjacent normal tissues and normal human embryonic kidney cell line, respectively. Moreover, we observed nephroblastoma patients with large tumor size, advanced National Wilms Tumor Study (NWTS) stage or unfavorable histopathological type, and patients that had higher SOX21-AS1 expression levels than nephroblastoma patients with small tumor size, early NWTS stage or favorable histopathological type. The in vitro studies suggested that knockdown of SOX21-AS1 suppressed nephroblastoma cell proliferation and colony formation, and induced cell-cycle arrest through up-regulating p57 expression. In conclusion, our study suggests that SOX21-AS1 functions as oncogenic lncRNA in nephroblastoma, which may provide a novel insight for nephroblastoma carcinogenesis.