LncRNA TP73‑AS1 predicts poor prognosis and promotes cell proliferation in ovarian cancer via cell cycle and apoptosis regulation.

TP73‑AS1, a critical cancer‑associated long noncoding RNA (lncRNA), has been identified in esophageal cancer and glioma. However, its biological role in ovarian cancer (OC) remains to be investigated. The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of TP73‑AS1 in human OC cell lines and clinical tumor samples to determine the function of this molecule. Reverse transcription‑quantitative polymerase chain reaction analysis was carried out to detect that TP73‑AS1 was upregulated in OC tissues and cell lines. Kaplan Meier Method was applied to study the association between overall survival of patients with OC and TP73‑AS1 expression. The results suggested that patients with high expression levels of TP73‑AS1 had lower survival compared with patients with low expression level of TP73‑AS1. MTT and colony formation assays were conducted to investigate the effects of TP73‑AS1 expression on OC cell proliferation. Flow cytometry analysis was used to analyze the effects of TP73‑AS1 expression on cell cycle progression and apoptosis. Loss‑of‑function experiments revealed that TP73‑AS1 silencing was able to suppress the growth of OC cells via modulating the cell cycle and apoptosis. The results of the present study suggest that TP73‑AS1 may be an oncogenic lncRNA that promotes the proliferation of OC cells and may therefore be an effective therapeutic target in patients with OC.