Serum non-coding RNA levels as potential diagnostic and prognostic markers of hepatocellular carcinoma

Abstract

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common type of liver cancers in the world. Most common cause of HCC is viral hepatitis B infection (HBV). That lead to HCC detection at late stage and be difficult for curative treatment. So, biomarkers for HCC are required to detect HCC efficiently. MicroRNAs and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play a key role in tumorigenesis through many different mechanisms. Moreover, non-coding RNA can be released into body fluid. Hence purpose of this study is to investigate the level of miRNA and lncRNAs in serum as the used as potential biomarkers for HBV-HCC detection. For miRNAs, miRNA-223-3p can be determined as an independent factor for predicting overall survival rate in patients with HCC-HBV. Therefore, miR-223-3p might be a novel potential miRNA for HCC prognosis. Another lncRNAs, circulating H19 can be used with AFP to increase both sensitivity and specificity for HCC prediction. We further studied the relation between H19 and cancer phenotypes by gene knock out via CRISPR/Cas9. The result showed that silenced H19 can decrease cell migration in Huh7 (p < 0.05). According to the complication of lncRNA functions in cell, it is difficult to conclude the main mechanism of lncRNA to predict the disease progression, and cannot use specific lncRNA alone for disease marker. Therefore, the use of combination marker types may help to improve predictive values for diseases progression. However, a large cohort is required for serum validation.