Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) is a heterogeneous hepatobiliary tumor with poor prognosis, and it lacks reliable prognostic biomarkers and effective therapeutic targets. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been documented to be involved in the progression of various cancers. However, the role of lncRNAs in ICC remains largely unknown. In the present work, we used bioinformatics analysis to identify the differentially expressed lncRNAs in human ICC tissues, among which lncRNA-PAICC was found to be an independent prognostic marker in ICC. Moreover, lncRNA-PAICC promoted the proliferation and invasion of ICC cells. Mechanistically, lncRNA-PAICC acted as a competitive endogenous RNA (ceRNA) that directly sponged the tumor suppressive microRNAs miR-141-3p and miR-27a-3p. The competitive binding property was essential for lncRNA-PAICC to promote tumor growth and metastasis through activating the Hippo pathway. In summary, our results highlighted the important role of the lncRNA-PAICC-miR-141-3p/27a-3p-Yap1 axis in ICC, which offers a novel perspective on the molecular pathogenesis and may serve as a potential target for antimetastatic molecular therapies of ICC.
Keywords: Hippo pathway; MiR-141-3p; MiR-27a-3p; ceRNA; intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma; lncRNAs.
Copyright © 2021 Xia, Chen, Yang, Zhu, Zhang, Yin, Hong, Chen, Chen and Li.