Objective  Long non-coding RNA (LncRNA) is closely related to the occurrence and development of various tumors. This study aimed to investigate the biological role and mechanism of LncRNA GATA3-AS1 in breast cancer progression. 

Methods  The expression level of LncRNA GATA3-AS1 in normal and breast cancer cells was de-tected via qRT-PCR, and the relationship between the expression of GATA3-AS1 and the different clinicopathological features of breast cancer was predicted using the bc-GenExMiner database. Subsequently we used the plasmid trans-fection experiment to obtain a breast cancer cell line with low expression of GATA3-AS1 and evaluated the function of GATA3-AS1 in the progression of breast cancer using Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK8), Wound Healing, and Transwell ex-periments. Finally, the downstream target gene GATA3 of GATA3-AS1 was predicted by online databases (such as starBase), and the correlation between the proteins expressed by GATA3-AS1 and its protein encoding gene GATA3 was verified by Western blot assay. 

Results  GATA3-AS1 was significantly overexpressed in breast cancer cell lines MDA-MB-231 and McF-7. Online analysis using the BC-GenexMINER database showed that the expression of GA-TA3-AS1 was higher in breast cancer patients who were: older than 51 years, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative (HER2-), estrogen receptor-positive (ER+), progesterone receptor-positive (PR+), and hormone receptor A positive (Luminal A). GATA3-AS1 expression was also significantly negatively correlated with the overall survival of patients with breast cancer. In vitro experiments showed that silencing GATA3-AS1 significantly reduced the prolifer-ation and migration of breast cancer cell lines MDA-MB-231 and McF-7. Besides, GATA3 protein level was significant-ly increased after knocking down GATA3-AS1 in MDA-MB-231 and McF-7 cell lines, suggesting that the oncogenic ef-fect of GATA3-AS1 may be mediated by the expression of its protein-coding gene GATA3. 

Conclusion  LncRNA GA-TA3-AS1 may promote the proliferation and migration of breast cancer cells by regulating the expression of GATA3.

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