LncRNA cancer susceptibility candidate 15 accelerates the breast cancer cells progression via miR-153–3p/KLF5 positive feedback loop

Highlights: • CASC15 expression level was aberrantly high-expressed in breast cancer tissue specimens and cells. • Loss-of-functional experiments showed that knockdown of CASC15 suppressed the malignant behaviors of breast cancer cells. • CASC15 functioned as ceRNA of miR-153–3p, besides, miR-153–3p targeted the 3'-UTR of KLF5 mRNA. • KLF5 binds with the promoter region of CASC15 and activates the transcription. Emerging literature have illustrated the vital regulatory roles of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) on the breast cancer tumorigenesis. Although series of researches have been proceeded on the pathogenesis, there are still much of unsolved mysteries worth investigating. This study uncovered that CASC15 expression level was aberrantly high-expressed in breast cancer tissue specimens and cells. Functionally, the loss-of-functional experiments showed that knockdown of CASC15 suppressed the malignant behaviors of breast cancer cells, such as proliferation, invasion and tumor growth in vitro and vivo. Mechanically, we confirmed that CASC15 functioned as a competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) of miR-153–3p, besides, miR-153–3p targeted the 3'-UTR of KLF5 mRNA utilizing the bioinformatics online tools, luciferase reporter assay and RNA immunoprecipitation. Interestingly, we confirmed that the transcription factor KLF5 binds with the promoter region of CASC15 and activates the transcription. In conclusion, we validated the positive feedback loop of KLF5/CASC15/miR-153–3p/KLF5 in the acceleration of breast cancer malignant behaviors and tumorigenesis, suggesting the important biologic roles of CASC15 on the breast cancer tumorigenesis.