Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Oncol. Mar 15, 2022; 14(3): 678-689
Published online Mar 15, 2022. doi: 10.4251/wjgo.v14.i3.678
RNA-Seq profiling of circular RNAs in human colorectal cancer 5-fluorouracil resistance and potential biomarkers
Pei-Qiu Cheng, Yu-Jing Liu, Sheng-An Zhang, Lu Lu, Wen-Jun Zhou, Dan Hu, Han-Chen Xu, Guang Ji
Pei-Qiu Cheng, Yu-Jing Liu, Lu Lu, Wen-Jun Zhou, Han-Chen Xu, Guang Ji, Institute of Digestive Diseases, Longhua Hospital, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai 200032, China
Sheng-An Zhang, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai 200032, China
Dan Hu, Shanghai Pudong New Area Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai 200032, China
Author contributions: Cheng PQ and Liu YJ contributed equally to this work, they performed the majority of the experiments and analyzed the data; Lu L and Zhang SA contributed to the analysis of sequencing data and network prediction; Zhou WJ and Hu D coordinated the research; Ji G and Xu HC are co-corresponding authors, and they contributed to the design of the study and editing the manuscript; all authors read, and approved the final manuscript.
Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 81874206; Shanghai Rising-Star Program, No. 20QA1409300; and the Program for Young Eastern Scholar at Shanghai Institutions of Higher Learning, No. QD2019034.
Institutional review board statement: This study did not involve a clinical case study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: No conflict of interest.
Data sharing statement: The datasets used during the current study were available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Guang Ji, MD, PhD, Chief Doctor, Professor, Institute of Digestive Diseases, Longhua Hospital, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, No. 725 South Wanping Road, Shanghai 200032, China. jiliver@vip.sina.com
Received: July 28, 2021
Peer-review started: July 28, 2021
First decision: September 5, 2021
Revised: September 10, 2021
Accepted: January 22, 2022
Article in press: January 22, 2022
Published online: March 15, 2022
Processing time: 225 Days and 4 Hours
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background

Therapy resistance has been a culprit for colorectal cancer (CRC) treatment. 5-fluorouracil (5-Fu) is a first-line chemotherapeutic agent for CRC, and it is very important to reveal the potential biomarkers and mechanisms of resistance.

Research motivation

Circular RNA (circRNA) plays a key role in the development and progression of cancer, but its role in the process of drug resistance has not been widely revealed. Therefore, we attempted to explore the relationship between circRNA and CRC drug resistance

Research objectives

Search for circRNAs that can predict the occurrence of CRC 5-Fu resistance, and explore its possibility as potential biomarkers.

Research methods

In this study, through the construction of drug-resistant cell lines and high-throughput sequencing technology, we revealed the changes in the expression of circRNAs during the process of drug resistance, and the potential circRNAs were verified by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction.

Research results

We identified circRNAs and mRNAs that are commonly altered in the development of 5-Fu drug resistance and suggested that hsa_circ_0002813, hsa_circ_0000236, hsa_circ_0122168, hsa_circ_0031584 and hsa_circ_0006877 may play an important regulatory role in the process of 5-Fu resistance in CRC. These circRNAs may act as potential predictive biomarkers and possible therapeutic targets of 5-Fu resistan.

Research conclusions

Our findings may offer new perspectives for understanding the occurrence of 5-Fu resistance in CRC, provide new biomarkers for predicting 5-Fu resistance, and reveal candidate targets for reversing drug resistance.

Research perspectives

Potential circRNA expression differences in drug resistance were sought from the perspective of high-throughput sequencing of paired drug-resistant and parental cell lines.