Inhibition of malignant human bladder cancer phenotypes through the down-regulation of the long non-coding RNA SNHG7

There is abundant evidence that long non-coding RNAs play important roles in the development of tumors. In the present study, our main aim was to explore the relationship between lncRNA SNHG7 and human bladder cancer cells, thus finding a novel target for bladder cancer therapy and diagnosis. Expression of lncRNA SNHG7 was evaluated using real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction in bladder tumor tissues and paired adjacent normal tissues from 72 patients diagnosed with urothelial bladder carcinoma. We analyzed the differences in expression according to grading and staging. Human bladder cancer cell lines UMUC, 5637, T24 and SW780 were transiently transfected with lncRNA SNHG7-specific siRNA and negative control siRNA. The changes in malignant phenotypes in transfected bladder cancer cells were determined using CCK-8 assay, wound-healing assay and ELISA. We found that lncRNA SNHG7 was correlated with human bladder cancer. lncRNA SNHG7 was overexpressed in bladder cancer tissues compared to paired normal tissues and expression of SNHG7 was higher in high-grade than low-grade tumors. The malignant phenotypes were significantly inhibited when we inhibited expression of lncRNA SNHG7 in several bladder cell lines. SNHG7 plays an oncogenic role in human bladder cancer and may be a potential novel therapeutic target for treating bladder cancer.