LncRNA Sponges to Facilitate Cell Proliferation, Metastasis, and EMT Process and Activate the MEK/ERK Signaling Pathway in Hepatocellular Carcinoma.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a prevalent malignant tumor with high morbidity and mortality across the world. Recent findings have suggested that long noncoding (lnc)RNA plays an important role in tumorigenesis and metastasis in a variety of cancers. However, the role of lncRNA in the initiation and progression of HCC remains largely unclear. In the present study, was highly expressed in HCC tumor tissues and cell lines. High expression was correlated with low survival of HCC patients. Loss-of-function experiments showed that knockdown of inhibited cell proliferation, migration, invasion, the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) process, and the mitogen-activated protein kinase/extracellular regulated protein kinase (MEK/ERK) signaling pathway in HCC. Molecular mechanism exploration uncovered that could directly interact with and negatively regulate . BMP1 is a downstream target gene of , and could regulate BMP1 expression by targeting . negatively regulated and BMP1 promoted the progression of HCC. Rescue experiments revealed that inhibitor could partially counteract the impact induced by knockdown in HCC. Taken together, our study is the first to show the interaction of with in facilitating cell proliferation, metastasis, EMT process, and MEK/ERK signaling pathway in HCC.