LncRNA-MALAT1, as a biomarker of neonatal BPD, exacerbates the pathogenesis of BPD by targeting miR-206.

Neonatal bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) is one of the common causes of premature birth complications, which is caused by lung dysplasia. Long non-coding RNA (LncRNA) has been proved to be related to BPD and other disease processes, but the molecular mechanism of metastasis-related lung adenocarcinoma transcript 1 (MALAT1) in BPD has not been fully understood. This study focused on exploring the clinical and molecular mechanism of MALAT1 in neonatal BPD, aiming to provide new insights for the management of neonatal BPD. In our study, we first found that serum MALAT1 was up-regulated in neonatal BPD and severe BPD. Further, through receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) analysis, it was found that the area under the curve of MALAT1 for differentiating neonatal BPD from severe BPD was 0.943 and 0.866, respectively. Then, we established BPD models in vivo and in vitro with C57BL/6J mice and BEAS-2B cells, and found that MALAT1 was also highly expressed in them and increased with the induction time of the models. Pathological evaluation confirmed that down-regulating MALAT1 or up-regulating miR-206 might improve the pathological condition of BPD. Obvious inflammatory response, oxidative stress and up-regulated apoptosis were observed in BPD models in vivo and in vitro. However, after MALAT1 knockdown treatment, the above abnormal phenomena were alleviated to varying degrees. Furthermore, we also found that MALAT1 has a targeted relationship with miR-206, and miR-206 is down-regulated in BPD in vivo and in vitro. Down-regulating miR-206 could also eliminate the anti-BPD effect after knocking down MALAT1. The above results indicated that MALAT1 has the potential as a blood biomarker of neonatal BPD, and MALAT1-miR-206 axis mediates BPD process, which may be a new target for neonatal BPD treatment.