The long non-coding RNA, urothelial carcinoma associated 1, promotes cell growth, invasion, migration, and chemo-resistance in glioma through Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway

The long non-coding RNA, urothelial carcinoma associated 1 (UCA1) has been demonstrated to play important roles in various types of cancers. This study investigated the functional role of UCA1 in glioma and explored the underlying molecular mechanisms. UCA1 was found to be highly up-regulated in glioma cells, and knock-down of UCA1 inhibited cell growth, invasion and migration, and also induced apoptosis in glioma cells. On the other hand, overexpression of UCA1 promoted cell proliferation, cell invasion and migration in glioma cells. Knock-down of UCA1 suppressed the activity of Wnt/β-catenin signaling, and treatment with lithium chloride restored the inhibitory effect of UCA1 knock-down on cell invasion and migration. More importantly, the aberrant expression of UCA1 was associated with chemo-resistance to cisplatin and temozolomide in glioma cells via interacting with Wnt/β-catenin signaling. In vivo studies showed that overexpression of UCA1 promoted the in vivo tumor growth of U87 cells in the nude mice. Clinically, UCA1 was found to be up-regulated in glioma tissues and higher expression level of UCA1 was correlated with poor survival in patients with glioma. Taken together, our results showed that UCA1 had a functional role in the regulation of glioma cell growth, invasion and migration, and chemo-resistance possibly via Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway.