Silence of long noncoding RNA PANDAR switches low-dose curcumin-induced senescence to apoptosis in colorectal cancer cells

Abstract

Tao Chen,1,* Peng Yang,1,* Hui Wang,1 Zhen-Yu He2 1Department of General Surgery, The Second Clinical Medical College of Nanjing Medical University, 2Department of General Surgery, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, People’s Republic of China *These authors contributed equally to this work Abstract: Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are emerging as having multiple roles in cancer progression. However, roles of lncRNAs in chemotherapy for colorectal cancer (CRC) remain unclear. This study investigated the biological functions of lncRNA PANDAR in CRC cells treated with curcumin chemotherapy. Herein, we identified that PANDAR expression was not notably differential in CRC tissues compared with the corresponding normal tissues. Consistently, in vitro experiments revealed that knockdown of PANDAR could not change the proliferation, apoptosis, or senescence of CRC cells. Further analyses showed that low-dose curcumin could induce senescence in CRC cells without affecting cell apoptosis. Moreover, expression of PANDAR was increased in curcumin-treated CRC cells. Furthermore, silencing PANDAR in curcumin-treated cells increased apoptosis and greatly attenuated senescence possibly by stimulating the expression of PUMA. Together, these findings indicate that knockdown of lncRNA PANDAR switches curcumin-induced senescence to apoptosis, which may be potentially valuable in CRC therapy. Keywords: colorectal cancer, long noncoding RNA, PANDAR, curcumin, chemotherapy

Keywords

• colorectal cancer
• long noncoding RNA
• PANDAR
• curcumin
• chemotherapy