CRNDE promotes cell tongue squamous cell carcinoma cell growth and invasion through suppressing miR-384

Tongue squamous cell carcinoma (TSCC) is the most common type of oral cancer and is an aggressive head and neck malignancy. Increasing studies have demonstrated that long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) play important roles in diverse biological cell processes, such as cell development, fate decisions, cell differentiation, cell migration, and invasion. In our study, we showed that long noncoding RNA colorectal neoplasia differentially expressed (CRNDE) expression was upregulated in TSCC cell lines and tissues. Overexpression of CRNDE increased the TSCC cell proliferation, cell cycle, and cell invasion. Moreover, ectopic expression of CRNDE inhibited the miR-384 expression in the SCC1 cell and increased the Kirsten Ras (KRAS), cell division cycle 42, and insulin receptor substrate 1 expression, which were the direct target genes of miR-384. We demonstrated that the miR-384 expression was downregulated in the TSCC samples compared with the paired adjacent nontumor samples. The expression of CRNDE was negatively correlated with the expression of miR-384 in the TSCC samples. Overexpression of miR-384 suppressed TSCC cell proliferation, cell cycle, and invasion. Furthermore, we demonstrated that CRNDE promoted TSCC cell proliferation and invasion through inhibiting miR-384 expression. These results suggested that CRNDE acts as an oncogene in the development of TSCC, which partially occurs through inhibiting miR-384 expression.