lncRNA- <i>CYTOR</i> Works as an Oncogene Through the <i>CYTOR</i> /miR-3679-5p/ <i>MACC1</i> Axis in Colorectal Cancer

Abstract

Pieces of evidence have shown that cytoskeleton regulator RNA (<i>CYTOR</i>), a long noncoding RNA (lncRNA), played a pivotal role in development and progression of a variety of cancers. In contrast, further research is needed to study the clinical significance and the detailed mechanism of action of lncRNA-<i>CYTOR</i> in colorectal cancer (CRC). This study aimed to investigate the clinical significance of <i>CYTOR</i> in CRC prognosis and identify the relevant potential signaling pathways and underlying mechanism of competing endogenous RNA. Reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) indicated that the expression of <i>CYTOR</i> was significantly elevated in CRC tumor tissues and cell lines. Aberrant expression of <i>CYTOR</i> was significantly related to TNM stage, T stage, N stage, and perineural and venous invasions. Survival analysis indicated that high-<i>CYTOR</i> expression was associated with poor overall survival in CRC patients (<i>p</i> = 0.0057), and multivariate analysis showed that high-<i>CYTOR</i> expression was an independent prognostic factor, which led to poor OS. In addition, bioinformatics analysis revealed that there were 18 microRNAs (miRNAs) interacted with <i>CYTOR</i>, and one of them, miR-3679-5p might collaborate with metastasis-associated in colon cancer-1 (<i>MACC1</i>), which was selected for further analysis. Pearson correlation analysis showed a significant positive correlation between the expression levels of <i>CYTOR</i> and <i>MACC1</i>. In conclusion, this study suggested that lncRNA-CYTOR played an important role in tumorigenesis and development through the <i>CYTOR</i>/miR-3679-5p/<i>MACC1</i> axis.