Hsa_circ₀007534/miR-761/ZIC5 regulatory loop modulates the proliferation and migration of glioma cells

Highlights: • Hsa_circ₀007534 knockdown inhibited glioma cell proliferation and migration. • Hsa_circ₀007534 regulated cell proliferation and migration by sponging miR-761. • ZIC5 was a target of miR-761. • Hsa_circ₀007534 promoted glioma cell proliferation and migration via upregulating ZIC5 expression by sponging miR-761. Increasing evidences demonstrate the essential roles of circular RNAs (circRNAs) in human cancers. However, the study about the functions of circRNAs in glioma remains very limited. In the present study, we found that circRNA hsa_circ₀007534 was highly expressed in glioma tissues compared to normal brain tissues. Furthermore, we found that knockdown of hsa_circ₀007534 significantly inhibited the proliferation and migration of glioma cells. In mechanism, we showed that hsa_circ₀007534 could sponge miR-761 to repress its availability in glioma cells. We found that inhibition of miR-761 could rescue the suppressed proliferation and migration of glioma cells by hsa_circ₀007534 knockdown. Moreover, we explored the downstream mechanism and found that ZIC5 was a target of miR-761. We showed that hsa_circ₀007534 promoted the expression of ZIC5 by inhibiting miR-761 in glioma cells. And restoration of ZIC5 expression significantly reversed the effects of hsa_circ₀007534 knockdown on glioma cell proliferation and migration. In summary, our results demonstrated that hsa_circ₀007534 serves as an oncogene in glioma via promoting ZIC5 expression by repressing miR-761 availability. Our results suggested that hsa_circ₀007534/miR-761/ZIC5 regulatory loop might be a promising therapeutic target for glioma treatment.