A maternally expressed gene 3 (MEG3) gene transcripts a 1.6 kb lncRNA whose act as an antitumor component in different cancer cells, such as breast, liver, glioma, colorectal, cervical, gastric, lung, ovarian and osteosarcoma cancer cells.
Importantly, MEG3 was considered as a promising diagnostic biomarker and therapeutic target for patients with osteosarcoma according to the Kaplan-Meier analysis of another independent osteosarcoma data set from the Cancer Genome Atlas (P = 0.05).
In conclusion, these experiments have demonstrated that MEG3 serves an essential regulatory role in the biological processes of human osteosarcoma cells, and imply that MEG3 may be a marker for predicting the occurrence and development of osteosarcoma.
As a result of this study, it was shown that the upregulated expression of miR-664a could have an inhibitory effect on MEG3 gene expression and migration of osteosarcoma cells.
Furthermore, multivariate analysis revealed that decreased expression of lncRNA MEG3, advanced clinical stage and distant metastasis were all independent predictors to overall survival of osteosarcoma patients.