FIGURE 2.

ELFN1-AS1 rescues the proliferation and invasion induced by hypoxia in colon cancer cells. (A) ELFN1-AS1-specific siRNAs were transfected into LoVo and HT29 cells with the negative siRNA as a control (Scramble). The ELFN1-AS1 level was detected using qRT-PCR after the transfection for 24 h. A t-test was used for this comparison. (B) and (C) After transfection with ELFN1-AS1 siRNA and empty plasmids, LoVo and HT29 cells were cultured in 5% CO₂ and 95% N₂ to generate the hypoxia + scramble and hypoxia + siELFN1-AS1 groups. Cell viability was detected using CCK8 assay. (D) Proliferation of LoVo and HT29 cells was determined using a colony formation assay. The photo of the plates was taken after 14 days of incubation. (E) and (F) Colony number of each group was counted in five random fields. Scale bar 5 mm. (G) Transwell assay was performed to detect the invasion of each group. After 24 h of culture in matrigel chambers, cells were photographed under a microscope at ×100 magnification. Scale bar 100 µ. (H) Number of invasive cells was counted in three random fields. One-way ANOVA was used for the comparison between the multiple groups with Bonferroni as a post hoc test. All data were representative of three independent experiments. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001; ****p < 0.0001.