Long Noncoding RNA Contributes to Progression in Hepatocellular Carcinoma by Sponging .

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is an aggressive primary hepatic cancer with high malignancy and poor prognosis. Long noncoding RNA has been classified as an oncogene to accelerate cell proliferation, migration, and invasion in many cancer types by interacting with the miRNA. Therefore, we assumed that might participate in HCC cell progression by interacting with expression. The expression of and in 35 HCC patients and HCC cells was measured by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. Cell transfection was conducted using Lipofectamine 2000 transfection reagent. CCK8 and flow cytometry was applied for the measurement of cell proliferation and apoptosis. Cell migration and invasion capacities were carried out by transwell assay. Xenograft mice were constructed by subcutaneously injecting of stably transfected Huh-7 cells in mice. The interaction between and was determined by luciferase reporter system. Protein expression of P13K, p-P13K, AKT, p-AKT, MMP-2, and MMP-9 was analyzed using Western blot assay. The expression of was upregulated, whereas was downregulated in HCC tumor tissues and cell lines (Hep3B and Huh-7) compared with normal tissues and human normal liver cell line MIHA. In addition, expression was negatively correlated with expression in HCC ( = 0.1867,  = 0.0171). More importantly, knockdown induced apoptosis and inhibited cell proliferation, migration, invasion, and epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). experiments revealed that the interference of inhibited tumor growth. Subsequently, luciferase reporter system confirmed the interaction between and miR-217-5p. The rescue experiments clarified that inhibitor attenuated the suppression of silencing on HCC cell proliferation, migration, invasion, and EMT. Furthermore, inhibitor restored the inhibition of silencing mediated p-PI3K/p-AKT/MMP-2/9 protein expression. contributes to cell progression in HCC by sponging , representing promising biomarkers for HCC treatment.