Objectives: To study the roles of STARD13 in cellular apoptosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).
Results: Quantitative real-time PCR and immunohistochemistry analyses showed that the expression levels of STARD13 and Fas were lower in clinical HCC tissues than in normal tissues and were positively correlated, which is consistent with the results analyzed by The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) data. Patients with higher STARD13 or Fas expression levels had longer overall survival. Additionally, STARD13 3'-UTR enhanced cellular apoptosis and the 3'-UTRs of STARD13 and Fas were predicted to harbor nine similar miRNA binding sites. And STARD13 3'-UTR promoted Fas expression in a 3'-UTR- and miRNA-dependent way and increased the sensitivity of HCC cells to chemotherapy. Importantly, the coding sequence of STARD13 did not increase Fas expression.
Conclusions: STARD13 3'-UTR promotes HCC apoptosis through acting as a ceRNA for Fas.
Keywords: 3′-UTR; Apoptosis; Fas; Hepatocellular carcinoma; STARD13; Tumor suppression; ceRNA.