LncRNA SNHG20 promotes the development of laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma by regulating miR-140
Authors: B-B Yang
Y-N Guo
J Xu
Y Li
Journal: European review for medical and pharmacological sciences (2019)
Discipline: PHARMACOLOGY & TOXICOLOGY
Keywords: lncRNA; SNHG20; Laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma; miR-140; Expression levels
Affiliations: Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Second Affiliated Hospital, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. .

Abstract:  Objective: This study aims to investigate the expression level of long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) SNHG20 in laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC), and to explore further whether it can promote the development of LSCC by regulating microRNA-140 (miR-140). Patients and methods: Expression levels of SNHG20 in 56 pairs of LSCC tissues and adjacent normal tissues were measured by quantitative Real Time-Polymerase Chain Reaction (qRT-PCR). The relationship between SNHG20 expression with pathological parameters and the prognosis of LSCC was analyzed. Besides, the SNHG20 expression in LSCC cells was also analyzed by qRT-PCR. The SNHG20 knockdown and overexpression model were constructed by lentivirus transfection in AMC-HN-8 and Hep-2 cells. Cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8) and 5-Ethynyl-2'-deoxyuridine (EdU) assay were used to analyze the effect of SNHG20 on the biological function of LSCC cells. Finally, the dual-luciferase reporter gene assay was performed to explore the potentials of SNHG20 and miR-140 in LSCC. Results: The SNHG20 expression in LSCC tissues or cells remarkably increased than controls, and the difference was statistically significant. The LSCC patients with the high expression level of SNHG20 were more likely to develop advanced tumor compared with patients with low expression of SNHG20. Moreover, the LSCC patients with the high expression level of SNHG20 had a shorter overall survival than those with low level. The cell proliferation ability significantly decreased in the SNHG20 knockdown group, while notably increased in SNHG20 overexpression group. MiR-140 was negatively correlated with SNHG20 in LSCC tissues and cells. Dual-luciferase reporter gene assay showed that SNHG20 could be targeted by miR-140 through a certain binding site. The cell rescue experiment also indicated that there was a mutual regulation between SNHG20 and miR-140, which could together affect the malignant progression of LSCC. Conclusions: We showed that the expression levels of SNHG20 in LSCC tissues or cell lines significantly increased and was associated with advanced tumor staging and undesirable prognosis of LSCC. In addition, SNHG20 could promote the malignant progression of LSCC. 

Retracted: No

PubPeer comments:
  The collection of clinical specimens was approved by the Ethics Monitoring Committee . This is unspecific boiler-plate. The authors are spread between two institutions (Second Affiliated Hospital, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou; and Ren Ji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai), so we do not know where patients were recruited, or who provided ethics approval. Figs 1D and 3E.  Kaplan Meier survival curve of LSCC patients based on SNHG20 expression ...  Kaplan Meier survival curve of LSCC patients based on miR-140 expression .  As well as resembling walls constructed of Lego, these pairs of K-M plots could not have been derived from the same pool of survival data by dichotomising the patients by different criteria. Notably, deaths are marked in each pair without corresponding deaths in the other. 3E shows a higher overall survival at the end of 75 months. Table 1: the column heads promise to convert numbers in each subgroup into percentages, but these are not delivered.  These are some of the characteristic features of a papermill, with products tabulated on a Google spreadsheet: https: docs.google.com spreadsheets d 1_762PbYYTCJhek5PdBuiDuN1q48UDgMa-rT6gi_jA8c edit?usp=sharing , 
 Nearly forgot Fig 3D.  The expression level of SNHG20 and miR-140 in LSCC was significantly negatively correlated .  Rescaled for comparison with (right) a superimposition of 15 variations of the same scatterplot from different papers. Darker data-points appear more frequently across these variants. , 
  AMC-HN-8 and Hep-2 cell lines were purchased from American Type Culture Collection The HEp-2 cell-line has long been recognised as rogue HeLa cells, unrelated to laryngeal carcinoma, removing any potential value from the putative experiments described here. The old  laryngeal squamous cancer misidentification has seen a recent resurgence in the outputs of papermills: https: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov pmc articles PMC6511639 , 
 *[above]* Fig 1c. The panels were taken from *[below]* Fig 1c of  Long noncoding RNA MALAT1 regulates HDAC4-mediated proliferation and apoptosis via decoying of miR-140-5p in osteosarcoma cells ([Sun Qin 2018] ).  ,