MiR-631 Inhibits Intrahepatic Metastasis of Hepatocellular Carcinoma by Targeting PTPRE.

Bingqing Chen,Xiaoping Chen,Huifang Liang,Yongqiang Qi,Chen Su,Bixiang Zhang,Hongwei Zhang,Zhibin Liao

doi:10.3389/fonc.2020.565266

Abstract

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have been reported to play critical roles in the pathological development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), one of the most common cancers in the world. Our study aims to explore the expression, function and mechanism of miR-631 in HCC. Our findings are that expression of miR-631 is significantly down-regulated in HCC tissue compared with that in adjacent non-cancerous tissue, and low expression of miR-631 in HCC tissue is associated with cirrhosis, multiple tumors, incomplete tumor encapsulation, poor tumor differentiation, and high TNM stage. Our test results showed that miR-631 could inhibit migration, invasion, epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) and intrahepatic metastasis of HCC. Receptor-type protein tyrosine phosphatase epsilon (PTPRE) as a downstream target of miR-631 could promote migration, invasion and EMT of HCC cells. Besides, the expression of PTPRE had a negative correlation with the expression of miR-631 both in vivo and in vitro, and increasing expression of PTPRE could reverse inhibitory effects of miR-631 in HCC cells. In sum, our study first demonstrated that miR-631 targeted PTPRE to inhibit intrahepatic metastasis in HCC. We gain insights from these findings into the mechanism of miRNAs regulation in HCC metastasis and further introduce a novel therapeutic target for HCC treatment.

Highlights

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common cancers in the world, and it is the fourth driver of cancer-related mortality (1)
The results indicated that miR-631 expression in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) tissue was significantly different from that in ANT (Figure 1A)
The results showed that miR-631 expression of HCC tissue was lower than that of ANT in 44 HCC patients, and 20 patients had high miR631 expression in HCC tissue, meaning that miR-631 expression in HCC tissue was significantly lower than that in ANT (Figure 1B)

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common cancers in the world, and it is the fourth driver of cancer-related mortality (1). Some 64 liver tissue samples were taken from HCC patients who underwent hepatectomy at the Hepatic Surgery Center, Tongji Hospital of Huazhong University of Science and Technology (Wuhan, China) during June 2014 and January 2015. BEL-7402 and HEK293T cells were received from the Hepatic Surgery Center of Tongji Hospital and identified by using the STR genotyping test (Genechem Co., Ltd, Shanghai, China) These cells were cultured using Dulbecco’s modified Eagle’s medium (Invitrogen Corporation, Carlsbad, CA, USA) with 10% fetal bovine serum (Life Technologies Inc., Gibco/Brl Division, Grand Island, NY, USA) in a humid culture room (5% CO2/37°C). P

RESULTS

DISCUSSION

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