Published online Oct 14, 2019. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v25.i38.5789
Peer-review started: July 29, 2019
First decision: August 17, 2019
Revised: August 30, 2019
Accepted: September 13, 2019
Article in press: September 13, 2019
Published online: October 14, 2019
Among all cancers, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) related mortality is one of the highest and has seen a dramatic increase in annual global incidence rate. Many recent studies have demonstrated how transcriptional regulation affects HCC. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNA) play a role in the initiation and progression of HCC, such as maintenance of cell growth, evasion of apoptosis, promotion of invasion and metastasis, stemness maintenance and epithelial to mesenchymal transition.
To discover biomarkers for the diagnosis and treatment of HCC.
To investigate the underlying mechanisms of lncRNA-SNHG15 in HCC.
lncRNA-SNHG15 expression was observed by qRT-PCR assay in HCC tissue and cell lines. Clinicopathological characteristics were collected, arranged and combined with expression analysis of HCC to evaluate the functions of lncRNA-SNHG15. Moreover, cell function assays and western blot were performed to explore the functions of lncRNA-SNHG15 and targets regulated by lncRNA-SNHG15 in HCC cell lines.
We found that lncRNA-SNHG15 was increased in HCC tissues and cell lines and exhibited a significantly positive relationship with tumor sizes, TNM stage and Edmondson-Steiner grading. Cell experiments showed SNHG15 increased the proliferation and invasion capacity of HCC cell lines, and miR-490-3p/histone deacetylase 2 may be the target regulated by lncRNA-SNHG15 in HCC cells.
Our study demonstrated that lncRNA-SNHG15 can significantly promote cell growth, migration and invasion of HCC. Furthermore, it can work through miR-490-3p/histone deacetylase 2. Therefore, our study provides some molecular mechanism and three new biomarkers for HCC.
In the future, research may reveal the important role of lncRNA-SNHG15 that enhances the sensitivity of HCC detection and further develop its application in anti-cancer treatments.