lncRNA-CYTOR Works as an Oncogene Through the CYTOR/miR-3679-5p/MACC1 Axis in Colorectal Cancer

Pieces of evidence have shown that cytoskeleton regulator RNA (CYTOR), a long noncoding RNA (lncRNA), played a pivotal role in development and progression of a variety of cancers. In contrast, further research is needed to study the clinical significance and the detailed mechanism of action of lncRNA-CYTOR in colorectal cancer (CRC). This study aimed to investigate the clinical significance of CYTOR in CRC prognosis and identify the relevant potential signaling pathways and underlying mechanism of competing endogenous RNA. Reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) indicated that the expression of CYTOR was significantly elevated in CRC tumor tissues and cell lines. Aberrant expression of CYTOR was significantly related to TNM stage, T stage, N stage, and perineural and venous invasions. Survival analysis indicated that high-CYTOR expression was associated with poor overall survival in CRC patients (p = 0.0057), and multivariate analysis showed that high-CYTOR expression was an independent prognostic factor, which led to poor OS. In addition, bioinformatics analysis revealed that there were 18 microRNAs (miRNAs) interacted with CYTOR, and one of them, miR-3679-5p might collaborate with metastasis-associated in colon cancer-1 (MACC1), which was selected for further analysis. Pearson correlation analysis showed a significant positive correlation between the expression levels of CYTOR and MACC1. In conclusion, this study suggested that lncRNA-CYTOR played an important role in tumorigenesis and development through the CYTOR/miR-3679-5p/MACC1 axis.