Differential expression of the lncRNA IGFL2-AS1 in uterine cervix cancer cell lines

• Grant number: 19/10031-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: August 01, 2019
• End date: June 30, 2021
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Biochemistry - Molecular Biology
• Principal Investigator: Luisa Lina Villa
• Grantee: Lucca Paolo Hsu Helmich
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Medicina (FM). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Cervical cancer is estimated to be the third most frequent neoplasm among the Brazilian female population in the biennium 2018-2019 (INCA, 2017), thus being a disease of great epidemiological relevance. Neoplasms of the uterine cervix are mainly divided into adenocarcinomas and epidermoid carcinomas. Adenocarcinomas are more difficult to detect on the pap smear, so their relative prevalence tends to increase over time. In addition, the prognosis and response to radiotherapy of patients with adenocarcinoma tend to be worse than patients with squamous cell carcinoma. Thus, it would be useful to have a biomarker that could differentiate these two types of cancer for diagnostic purposes. A long intergenic non-coding RNA (lincRNA), insulin-like growth factor receptor 2 antisense (IGFL2-AS1), much more expressed in epidermoid carcinomas than adenocarcinomas (JORGE et al., In submission), is a promising target for this purpose. Thus, the main objective of this study is to quantify the expression of IGFL2-AS1 in a cell line of adenocarcinoma of the uterine cervix and to compare it with an epidermoid carcinoma cell line, by means of RT-qPCR assays. Furthermore, it has as a secondary objective of quantifying IGFL2-AS1 expression in adenocarcinoma cells treated with 5-Aza-22-deoxycytidine DNA (AZA C) demethylating agent and histone trichostatin A (TSA) deacetylation inhibitor, so as to investigate possible epigenetic mechanisms involved in suppressing the expression of this transcript in adenocarcinoma.