摘要

Recent efforts have revealed that numerous natural antisense IncRNAs play a crucial role in the regulation of cancer biology. Here, based on our previous study, we further identified that the IncRNA FOXC2-AS1 and its antisense transcript FOXC2 are positively up-regulated in doxorubicin-resistant osteosarcoma cell lines and tissues, correlate with poor prognosis and promote doxorubicin resistance in osteosarcoma cells in vitro and in vivo. In addition, FOXC2-AS1 and FOXC2 are mainly located in the cytoplasm and form an RNA RNA double-stranded structure in the overlapping region, which is necessary for FOXC2-AS1 to regulate the expression of FOXC2 at both the transcription and post transcription levels. In addition, transcription factor FOXC2 also contributes to doxorubicin resistance through inducing the expression of the classical multi-drug resistance-related ABCB1 gene similar to FOXC2-AS1. Thus, we concluded that the IncRNA FOXC2-AS1 may promote doxorubicin resistance in OS by increasing the expression of transcription factor FOXC2, further facilitating ABCB1 expression. These findings demonstrate the potential underlying mechanism of FOXC2-AS1 in the regulation of doxorubicin resistance in OS and possibly provide a novel reversing target.