Mechanism of long-chain non-coding RNA hypoxia-inducible factor 1α-antisense RNA 1 regulating chemotherapy resistance of retinoblastoma by inhibiting hypoxia-inducible factor-α expression

Retinoblastoma (Rb) mostly occurs in infants and young children with weak resistance. Surgical treatment causes great damage to children's appearance, so adjuvant chemotherapy is needed to reduce the damage. But chemotherapeutic resistance affects treatment effectiveness and may even lead to the death of the child. Exploring the specific mechanism of drug resistance in Rb children is helpful to improve the therapeutic effect. It was found that the relative expression in Rb cell Y79, SO-Rb50, and HXO-Rb44 was greatly higher than that in normal hum an retinal cells. After transfection of SI-HIF1A-AS1 into Rb cells, the expression of lncRNA HIF1A-AS1 was decreased greatly, and the level of HIF-1α was down-regulated. Suppress lncRNA HIF1A-AS1 expression can reduce cell proliferation and improve apoptosis. Based on the overexpression of HIF-1α, the cell proliferation ability was restored partially, and the apoptosis ability was reduced greatly. When cells were cultured with vincristine, we found that suppress lncRNA HIF1A-AS1 expression can decrease cell survival, and overexpression of HIF-1α improved cell survival. The above results confirmed that inhibition of lncRNA HIF1AAS1 expression could reduce drug resistance of Y97 cells, while overexpression of HIF-1α can antagonize the drug resistance of low expression lncRNA HIF1A-AS1 against Rb cells. Therefore, this study suggests that lncRNA HIF1A-AS1 may regulate Rb cells' resistance to vincristine by regulating HIF-1α expression.