circCYFIP2 Acts as a Sponge of miR-1205 and Affects the Expression of Its Target Gene E2F1 to Regulate Gastric Cancer Metastasis

Accumulating evidence suggested that circular RNAs (circRNAs) play critical roles in the initiation and progression of malignant cancers. However, the roles of circRNAs in gastric cancer (GC) remain largely unknown. In the present study, we investigated the expression of circRNAs in 5 GC tissues with metastasis and 5 GC tissues without metastasis by microarray analysis. We focused on hsa_circ_0003506, which was spliced from CYFIP2 gene located at chr5:156786012–156788606 and finally formed a sense-overlapping circular transcript of 366 nt, and thus we named it circCYFIP2. circCYFIP2 was found to be significantly upregulated in GC tissues and cell lines. High expression of circCYFIP2 was associated with metastasis and poor prognosis of GC patients. Function assays revealed that overexpression or knockdown of circCYFIP2 significantly enhanced or reduced GC cell proliferation and invasion abilities. In mechanism, we found that circCYFIP2 might serve as a competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) of microRNA-1205 (miR-1205) in GC progression. Besides, E2F1 was found to be a target of miR-1205. Collectively, our findings suggested that circCYFIP2 might serve as an oncogenic circRNA to promote GC progression via the miR-1205/E2F1 axis, which provided a potential therapeutic target for the treatment of GC.