SNORD47, a box C/D snoRNA, suppresses tumorigenesis in glioblastoma

// Bin Xu 1, * , Min-Hua Ye 1, * , Shi-Gang Lv 1 , Qi-Xue Wang 2, 3 , Miao-Jing Wu 1 , Bing Xiao 1 , Chun-Sheng Kang 2, 3 and Xin-Gen Zhu 1 1 Department of Neurosurgery, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, Nanchang, Jiangxi, China 2 Department of Neurosurgery, Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, Heping District, Tianjin, China 3 Laboratory of Neuro-Oncology, Tianjin Neurological Institute, Tianjin, China * These authors have contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Xin-Gen Zhu, email: zxg2008vip@163.com Chun-sheng Kang, email: kang97061@tmu.edu.cn Keywords: SNORD47, glioblastoma, cell cycle, proliferation, invasion Abbreviations: snoRNAs: small nucleolar RNAs; EMT: epithelial-mesenchymal transition; GAS5: growth arrest-specific transcript 5 Received: February 06, 2017     Accepted: March 03, 2017     Published: March 30, 2017 ABSTRACT SNORD47 is a member of the C/D box small nucleolar RNAs, which have been implicated in cancer development. We intended to investigate the therapeutic potential of SNORD47 in glioma. We found that the expression of SNORD47 was downregulated in glioma tissues samples and inversely associated with advanced tumor stage (WHO grade IV). Kaplan-Meier survival analysis revealed that glioma patients with high SNORD47 expression had longer overall survival than those with low SNORD47 expression. SNORD47 suppressed the proliferation of glioma cells and induced G2 phase arrest. In addition, upregulation of SNORD47 suppressed invasion and epithelial-mesenchymal transition in glioma cells, and combination treatment with lenti-SNORD47 could augment the anti-tumor effect of temozolomide. These results showed that SNORD47 acted as a tumor suppressor in glioma, and provided the potential anti-tumor function in glioma treatment.