LncRNA MEG3 inhibits rheumatoid arthritis through miR‐141 and inactivation of AKT/mTOR signalling pathway

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammation mediated by autoimmune responses. MEG3, a kind of long noncoding RNA (lncRNA), participates in cell proliferation in cancer tissues. However, the correlation between MEG3 and RA is yet unclear. Therefore, to clarify how MEG3 works in RA, we performed a series of experiments using RA samples. We found that MEG3 was downregulated in the fibroblast‐like synoviocytes of RA patients (RA‐FLS), in comparison with healthy subjects. MEG3 was also down‐regulated evidently in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)‐treated chondrocyte. As part of our experiments, MEG3 was overexpressed in chondrocyte by transfection with lentivirus containing sequences encoding MEG3. In addition, in presence of LPS, reductions were identified not only in the cell proliferation, but also in the generation of interleukin‐23 (IL‐23), which, however were reversed in the lentivirus (containing MEG3‐encoding sequences)‐transfected chondrocytes. Up‐regulated MEG3 resulted in an increase the level of Ki67. Moreover, MEG3 was negatively correlated with miR‐141, and miR‐141 was up‐regulated in LPS‐treated chondrocyte. Inhibitory effects of MEG3 overexpression, mentioned above, were partially abolished by overexpressed miR‐141. Further, animal experiment also showed the inhibitory effect of MEG3 in overexpression on the AKT/mTOR signaling pathway. In‐vivoexperiments also showed that cell proliferation was facilitated by MEG3 overexpression with inhibited inflammation. In summary, the protective role of MEG3 in RA was proved to be exerted by the increase in the rate of proliferation, which might correlate to the regulatory role of miR‐141 and AKT/mTOR signal pathway, suggesting that MEG3 holds great promise as a therapeutic strategy for RA.