Down-regulation of long non-coding RNA AFAP1-AS1 inhibits tumor growth, promotes apoptosis and decreases metastasis in thyroid cancer

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), a new type of transcripts, play important roles in various cellular biological processes, involving tumorigenesis. Previous studies showed that lncRNA AFAP1-AS1 was aberrantly expressed in numerous cancers. Nevertheless, we know quite a little about the expression pattern and biological function of AFAP1-AS1 in thyroid cancer. In this study, we adopted the quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) to detect the expression of AFAP1-AS1 in thyroid cancer tissues. We discovered that expression of AFAP1-AS1 was increased in thyroid cancer tissues. MTT assays elucidated that down-regulation of AFAP1-AS1 could suppress growth of thyroid cancer cells. And the results of flow cytometry analysis indicated knockdown of AFAP1-AS1 induced apoptosis in thyroid cancer. Transwell assay was applied to show decreased cell migration in thyroid cancer as a result of down-regulation of AFAP1-AS1. Hence, our study provided evidence for our hypothesis that AFAP1-AS1 could be a therapeutic target for thyroid cancer.