The role of AIM2 in human hepatocellular carcinoma and its clinical significance.

Abstract

AIM2 (absent in melanoma 2) was first discovered as the gene which was not expressed in melanoma cells. It is established that the AIM2 inflammasome function as the double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) sensor, and it plays a crucial role in infectious disorders and cancer. Little is known about the AIM2 expression pattern and its clinical significance in human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), understating how AIM2 altered the HCC cells is of high clinical interest. Immunohistochemistry was performed to investigate the AIM2 expression in HCC tissues. Then we constructed the ectopic AIM2-expressed HCC cell line by lentiviral transduction. Biological functional assays were used to analyze the clinical significance of AIM2. AIM2 expression was significantly decreased in human HCC tissues compared with adjacent normal tissues, and the overall survival of HCC patients with higher AIM2 expression was significantly better. Ectopic expression of AIM2 in HCC cells significantly inhibited migration and promoted apoptosis. Furthermore, our study revealed that the notch signaling pathway could be involved in the regulation of AIM2 in the cellular network in HCC cells. AIM2 delayed the tumor progression and correlated with immune cell infiltration. In this study, we suggested AIM2 played an inhibitory role in regulating the growth and metastasis of HCC, which supported the notion that AIM2 could serve as a potential therapeutic target for HCC.