Sun Peng, Fan Xinyi, Hu Xiao, Fu Xiaoyue, Wei Qian, Zang Yunjin
Department of Liver Transplantation, The Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University, Qingdao 266003, People's Republic of China.
Intensive Care Unit, the Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University, Qingdao 266003, People's Republic of China.
Cancer Manag Res. 2019 Dec 31;11:10957-10967. doi: 10.2147/CMAR.S232940. eCollection 2019.
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common malignant cancers, while the molecular mechanism is not clear. Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are a class of naturally occurring endogenous noncoding RNAs that prove to play important roles in the occurrence, development and prognosis of HCC. In this study, we focused on an abnormally expressed circular RNA-circPCNX in HCC and study the function of circPCNX and Pecanex (PCNX) in HCC.
Circular RNA sequencing was used to find the abnormally expressed circRNAs and qRT-PCR was used to verify it. CCK8 assay, colony formation assay and cell apoptosis assay were used to study biological functions, and Luciferase reporter assay and Western blot analysis were used to study the mechanism.
We observed that circPCNX and Pecanex were significantly upregulated in tumor tissues of patients with HCC and correlated with clinicopathological variables or prognosis of HCC patients. Functional investigations showed circPCNX and Pecanex could promote the viability of HCC cells. Mechanistic investigations suggested that both circPCNX and Pecanex 3'UTR could bind to miR-506 and subsequently inhibited the miR-506-induced anticarcinogenic effect in HCC.
Our study revealed the function of circPCNX and Pecanex in promoting HCC progression and acting as biomarkers in the clinical estimate and treatment of HCC.
肝细胞癌（HCC）是最常见的恶性肿瘤之一，但其分子机制尚不清楚。环状RNA（circRNAs）是一类天然存在的内源性非编码RNA，已证明在HCC的发生、发展和预后中发挥重要作用。在本研究中，我们聚焦于HCC中异常表达的环状RNA——circPCNX，并研究circPCNX和佩卡内克斯（PCNX）在HCC中的功能。
使用环状RNA测序来寻找异常表达的circRNAs，并使用qRT-PCR进行验证。采用CCK8检测、集落形成检测和细胞凋亡检测来研究生物学功能，采用荧光素酶报告基因检测和蛋白质免疫印迹分析来研究机制。
我们观察到circPCNX和佩卡内克斯在HCC患者的肿瘤组织中显著上调，并且与HCC患者的临床病理变量或预后相关。功能研究表明circPCNX和佩卡内克斯可促进HCC细胞的活力。机制研究表明，circPCNX和佩卡内克斯3'UTR均可与miR-506结合，随后抑制miR-506诱导的HCC抗癌作用。
我们的研究揭示了circPCNX和佩卡内克斯在促进HCC进展中的功能，以及在HCC临床评估和治疗中作为生物标志物的作用。
