Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2019. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Apr 28, 2019; 25(16): 1964-1974
Published online Apr 28, 2019. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v25.i16.1964
Role and mechanism of circ-PRKCI in hepatocellular carcinoma
Su-Xia Qi, Hui Sun, Hui Liu, Jing Yu, Zhi-Yong Jiang, Ping Yan
Su-Xia Qi, Jing Yu, Ping Yan, Emergency Department, Qingdao Municipal Hospital (Group), Qingdao 266000, Shandong Province, China
Hui Sun, Department of Clinical Laboratory, Qingdao Municipal Hospital (Group), Qingdao 266000, Shandong Province, China
Hui Liu, Department of Clinical Laboratory, Qingdao Women's and Children's Hospital, Qingdao 266034, Shandong Province, China
Zhi-Yong Jiang, Department of Clinical Laboratory, Qingdao Haici Medical Group, Qingdao 266034, Shandong Province, China
Author contributions: Yan P designed the research; Qi SX wrote the article; Sun H and Liu H performed the research and acquired and analyzed the data; Yu J and Jiang ZY performed the majority of experiments; Qi SX, Sun H and Liu H contributed equally to this work.
Institutional review board statement: This study was reviewed and approved by the Qingdao Municipal Hospital (Group) Ethics Committee.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Ping Yan, MSc, Attending Doctor, Emergency Department, Qingdao Municipal Hospital (Group), No. 5, Donghai Middle Road, Qingdao 266000, Shandong Province, China. kschdje384@163.com
Telephone: +86-13792498901 Fax: +86-532-00000530
Received: February 20, 2019
Peer-review started: February 20, 2019
First decision: March 13, 2019
Revised: March 21, 2019
Accepted: March 24, 2019
Article in press: March 25, 2019
Published online: April 28, 2019
Abstract
BACKGROUND

The circular RNA circ-PRKCI is an endogenous non-coding RNA that forms a covalently closed ring after reverse splicing, which plays a key role in the occurrence and development of multiple digestive system tumors.

AIM

To investigate the role and mechanism of circ-PRKCI in the occurrence and development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

METHODS

This study used real-time polymerase chain reaction to detect the expression of circ-PRKCI in tumor tissues, tumor adjacent tissues, and blood in patients with HCC and other digestive system tumor cells. A series of functional tests were performed to explore whether circ-PRKCI affects the growth of HCC cells and what is its mechanism in HCC. Meanwhile, fluorescence in situ hybridization was used to detect the subcellular localization of circ-PRKCI. Survival analysis was performed to predict the correlation between circ-PRKCI and the prognosis of HCC. Chi-square test and t-test were performed for statistical analyses.

RESULTS

The level of circ-PRKCI was significantly higher in HCC tissues than in tumor adjacent tissues, and in HCC cell lines than in cells lines of esophageal, liver, stomach, and colon cancers. A series of functional tests showed that circ-PRKCI substantially inhibited cell apoptosis and promoted cell invasion. It was found that circ-PRKCI can act as the sponge of miRNA-545 to reduce the expression of AKT3 protein. Moreover, the result of survival analysis showed that circ-PRKCI target gene E2F7 can reduce liver cancer patients’ survival rate. And clinical data suggested that the distribution of circ-PRKCI rose with the depth of invasion, lymph node metastasis, distant metastasis, and TNM stage, indicating that circ-PRKCI may affect the survival and prognosis of patients with HCC by regulating E2E7.

CONCLUSION

This study explores the role and mechanism of circ-PRKCI in HCC, which provides a new research direction and theoretical basis for the treatment of HCC.

Keywords: Circ-PRKCI, Hepatocellular carcinoma, Cell invasion, Protein kinase B signaling pathway, Progression

Core tip: The circular RNA circ-PRKCI plays an important role in a variety of digestive system tumors. This study explored the role and mechanism of circ-PRKCI in hepatocellular carcinoma. The results of the study showed that: (1) significant high circ-PRKCI expression is present in liver cancer progression; (2) circ-PRKCI promotes the invasion of liver cancer cells; (3) circ-PRKCI can function as a ceRNA to regulate protein kinase B signaling pathway along with miRNA-545; and (4) circ-PRKCI target gene E2F7 may affect the survival and prognosis of patients with liver cancer. This study provides a new research direction and theoretical basis for the treatment of HCC.