Long noncoding RNA NEAT1 promotes cardiac fibrosis in heart failure through increased recruitment of EZH2 to the Smad7 promoter region

Cardiac fibrosis, a well-known major pathological process that ultimately leads to heart failure, has attracted increasing attention and focus in recent years. A large amount of research indicates that long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) play an important role in cardiac fibrosis, but little is known about the specific function and mechanism of the lncRNA NEAT1 in the progression of cardiac fibrosis to heart failure. In the present study, we have demonstrated that the lncRNA NEAT1 is upregulated in patients with heart failure. Similarly, the expression of Neat1 was also increased in the left ventricular tissue of transverse aortic constriction (TAC) surgery mice and cardiac fibroblasts treated with TGF-β1. Further, gain-of-function and loss-of-function experiments showed that silencing of Neat1 attenuated cardiac fibrosis, while overexpression of Neat1 with adenovirus significantly aggravated the in vitro progression of fibrosis. With regard to the underlying mechanism, our experiments showed that Neat1 recruited EZH2 to the promoter region of Smad7 through physical binding of EZH2 to the promoter region, as a result of which Smad7 expression was inhibited and the progression of cardiac fibrosis was ultimately exacerbated. We found that the introduction of shNeat1 carried by adeno-associated virus-9 significantly ameliorated cardiac fibrosis and dysfunction caused by TAC surgery in mice. Overall, our study findings demonstrate that the lncRNA Neat1 accelerates the progression of cardiac fibrosis and dysfunction by recruiting EZH2 to suppress Smad7 expression. Thus, NEAT1 may serve as a target for the treatment of cardiac fibrosis. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12967-021-03211-8.