LncRNA WTAPP1 promotes proliferation of laryngeal carcinoma cells through regulating microRNA-592
Authors: Y Shi
X-J Ge
X-Y Shi
J-J Lin
Journal: European review for medical and pharmacological sciences (2020)
Discipline: PHARMACOLOGY & TOXICOLOGY
Keywords: lncRNA WTAPP1; laryngeal cancer; malignant progression; microRNA-592; proliferation
Affiliations: Department of Clinical Laboratory, The Second Children & Women's Healthcare of Jinan City, Jinan, China. .

Abstract:  Objective: The aim of this work was to investigate the mechanism by which long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) WTAPP1 promotes the malignant progression of laryngeal cancer. Patients and methods: In this study, quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) examined the expression of lncRNA WTAPP1 in 49 pairs of tumor tissue specimens and paracancerous normal ones collected from laryngeal cancer patients. Subsequently, in the laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma cell lines AMC-HN-8 and Hep-2, WTAPP1 overexpression and knockdown vectors were constructed using lentivirus, and cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8), cell colony formation and 5-ethynyl-2'-deoxyuridine (EdU) assays were carried out to analyze the impact of lncRNA WTAPP1 on the function of laryngeal cancer cells. Finally, Luciferase reporting assay and recovery experiments were carried out to further explore whether lncRNA WTAPP1 has an impact on the malignant progression of laryngeal cancer via modulating microRNA-592. Results: QRT-PCR results revealed a significantly higher expression of lncRNA WTAPP1 in tumor tissues of patients with laryngeal cancer than that in adjacent normal ones. Compared with patients with low expression of WTAPP1, those with higher expression had a more advanced pathological stage. Meanwhile, the proliferation ability of cells in sh-WTAPP1 group was remarkably attenuated when compared with that in sh-NC group. In addition, microRNA-592 and WTAPP1 mRNA levels were found negatively correlated in laryngeal carcinoma tissue specimens. Luciferase reporter gene assay indicated that WTAPP1 can be targeted by microRNA-592 through certain binding sites. Moreover, we demonstrated through some recovery experiments that WTAPP1 can indeed serve as an oncogene accelerating the malignant progression of laryngeal cancer through the modulation of microRNA-592. Conclusions: LncRNA WTAPP was markedly highly expressed both in laryngeal carcinoma tissues and cell lines, which was also found to be closely relevant to the pathological stage of laryngeal cancer patients. Additionally, lncRNA WTAPP1 is able to enhance the proliferation capacity of laryngeal carcinoma cells via regulating microRNA-592. 

Retracted: No

PubPeer comments:
 This paper appears to be part of a large set of papers ( 200 as of today and growing) that share a very similar layout. Subsets of these papers appear to share similar Kaplan-Meier survival plots, correlation plots, flow cytometry panels, and overlapping photos of wound-healing, transwell assays, etc. Yet, there is little to no overlap between the authors of these papers or their departments and affiliated institutions. I have been calling this set the  Comb papers, because the Kaplan-Meier plots have a comb-like appearance. For PubPeer user Hoya Camphorifolia, the survival plots look like Lego blocks. Many of these survival plots show a sudden drop of survival at 75 months. Another characteristic is the lack of percentages in their Tables I in columns promising percentages, and the spread of patients into roughly equally-sized group, no matter which parameter is chosen. The very similar layout and overlapping photos suggest these papers might have all been created by the same entity, perhaps a paper mill. Here is Figure 1B from this paper, showing the Comb- (or Lego-)like survival plot with its nosedive at 75 months. ![file] And here is Table I with its undelivered percentages in the High Low columns. Note that not all numbers add up to 49 patients. ![file] , 
 Fig 3  B, qRT-PCR was used to detect the differential expression of miR-592 in tumor tissues and paracancerous tissues of patients with laryngeal cancer... D, There was a significant negative correlation between the expression levels of WTAPP1 and miR-592 in laryngeal carcinoma tissues . ![file] I have stretched 3B vertically so that the vertical axes are on the same scale, to make the point that there is **no relationship** between the two distributions of miR-592 expression levels in 3B and 3D. , 
  Human laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma cell lines (AMC-HN-8 and Hep-2) were purchased from American Type Culture Collection The HEp-2 cell-line has long been recognised as rogue HeLa cells, unrelated to squamous-cell carcinoma, though that old misidentification has seen a recent resurgence in the outputs of papermills: https: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov pmc articles PMC6511639 ,