Evaluation of expression of the relationship between the expression of UCA1 lncRNA and miR-143 genes in tumor tissue and tumor margin tissue in patients with colorectal cancer

Abstract

The crosstalk between lncRNAs and miRNAs, and their dysregulation participate in various aspects of tumorigenesis, possessing great value as diagnostic and therapeutic targets. Therefore, this study intended to evaluate the expression of miR-143 and lncRNA UCA-1 in colorectal cancer (CRC) in order to identify their clinical significance. Methods: The expression levels of miR-143 and lncRNA UCA-1 were explored using the TCGA Colon Cancer dataset. Besides, the total RNA of 75 CRC tissue samples and 50 adjacent normal samples was extracted and subjected to qRT-PCR to quantify miR-143 and lncRNA UCA-1 expression levels. Furthermore, the correlation between the clinicopathological features of patients and expression levels of miR-143 and lncRNA UCA-1 was investigated. Results: The results obtained from TCGA and clinical samples evidenced that lncRNA UCA-1 is significantly upregulated while miR-143 is downregulated in CRC samples compared to adjacent normal tissues. miR-143 downregulation was significantly associated with distant metastasis, differentiation, and lymph node invasion in CRC patients (P = 0.043, P = 0.045, and P= 0.0051 respectively). Likewise, lncRNA UCA-1 upregulation showed a significant correlation with distant metastasis (P = 0.0037) and lymph node invasion (P = 0.008). Besides, a significantly negative association was found between miR-143 and lncRNA UCA-1 expression in CRC samples. ROC curve analysis also indicated the great promise of miR-143 expression to be considered as a diagnostic indicator for CRC by estimating an AUC value of 0.8693.