Abstract
The incidence and mortality of cervical cancer (CC) rank fourth among those of all gynecological malignancies. Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) serve important roles in the development of various types of cancer. The aim of the present study was to explore the role of lncRNAs in the pathogenesis of CC and to identify novel therapeutic targets. LINC01012 was identified to be associated with an unfavorable prognosis in patients with CC based on bioinformatics analyses. Upregulated LINC01012 expression was further verified in CC samples and in cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 3 tissues compared with healthy tissues using reverse transcription-quantitative PCR. Functionally, following transfection with LINC01012 short hairpin RNA (sh-LINC01012), the proliferation and migration of CC cell lines were examined using 5-ethynyl-2'-deoxyuridine staining, colony formation and Transwell assays, which demonstrated that knockdown of LINC01012 in CC cells suppressed cell proliferation and migration in vitro and tumor growth in an in vivo xenograft model. The potential mechanisms of LINC01012 were further explored. A negative association between LINC01012 and cyclin dependent kinase inhibitor 2D (CDKN2D) was also identified based on The Cancer Genome Atlas data and this was confirmed using western blotting and rescue experiments. Consistently, knockdown of LINC01012 in CC cells upregulated CDKN2D expression. The inhibition of proliferation and migration of CC cells following transfection with sh-LINC01012 was reversed following co-transfection of sh-LINC01012 and CDKN2D short hairpin RNA. These findings suggested that upregulated LINC01012 expression in CC may stimulate the proliferation and migration of cancer cells, thus promoting CC progression via downregulation of CDKN2D.