Long non-coding RNA HNF1A-AS1 mediated repression of miR-34a/SIRT1/p53 feedback loop promotes the metastatic progression of colon cancer by functioning as a competing endogenous RNA.

In recent years, accumulating evidence indicates that long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have emerged as powerful influence factors in the progression of multiple malignancies. Dysregulation of lncRNA HNF1A-antisense 1 (HNF1A-AS1) has been reported in many types of human cancers, and studies on HNF1A-AS1 function in cancers revealed that HNF1A-AS1could act as either oncogene or tumor suppressor. Nevertheless, the functional involvement of HNF1A-AS1 in colon cancer remains unknown. In this study, we reported that HNF1A-AS1 was frequently upregulated in colon cancer tissues and associated with poor prognosis. Upregulated HNF1A-AS1 promoted colon cancer cell viability, migration and invasion both in vitro and in vivo. HNF1A-AS1 silencing impaired tumor growth and metastasis in xenograft model assay. Moreover, HNF1A-AS1 functioned as an oncogene in metastasis of colon cancer in part through serving as a competing endogenous RNA to modulate miRNA-34a expression, subsequently with repression of miR-34a/SIRT1/p53 feedback loop and activation of canonical Wnt signaling pathway. Our results demonstrated that HNF1A-AS1 mediated the metastatic progression of colon cancer in part through miR-34a/p53 signaling axis, and established its candidacy as a new prognostic biomarker and a potential novel therapeutic target.