Extract of Stellerachamaejasme L(ESC) inhibits growth and metastasis of human hepatocellular carcinoma via regulating microRNA expression

Evaluation of Diagnostic and Prognostic Value of hsa_circ_0084927 and Analysis of Associated ceRNA Network in Colorectal Cancer

Object

This study aims to analyze the differentially expressed circRNA in colon adenocarcinoma (COAD) and evaluate its diagnostic and prognostic value. Analyze associated circRNA-miRNA-mRNA network in COAD.

Methods and Materials

Real-time quantitative PCR (RT-PCR) was used to verify differentially expressed circRNA in COAD tissues and cells; Receiver operator characteristic (ROC) and Cox regression analysis were used to evaluating its diagnostic and prognostic value; Meanwhile we conducted CCK-8, invasion, and migration experiments in cell lines to explore the function of circRNA. In addition, a competitive endogenous RNA (ceRNA) network was established using bioinformatics methods to explore its prognostic value and potential functional mechanisms.

Results

Our study found that hsa_circ_0084927 is highly expressed in COAD tissues and cell lines. Plasma hsa_circ_0084927 can be used as a diagnostic marker for COAD patients; hsa_circ_0084927 can promote the proliferation, migration and invasion of COAD cells. In addition, we effectively constructed a ceRNA: network has_circ_0084927/miR-106b-5p/VEGFA. The ceRNA network indicates that hsa_circ_0084927 may affect the prognosis of COAD through the regulation of cell cycle, apoptosis and other pathways.

Conclusion

Our research results indicate that hsa_circ_0084927 has a cancer-promoting effect and may be used as a circulating tumor marker for COAD prognosis. In addition, this study proposes a new ceRNA network to provide new insights for the targeted therapy of COAD.

Network Pharmacology and Molecular Docking-Based Investigation: Prunus mume Against Colorectal Cancer via Silencing RelA Expression

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the most pervasive cancers in the human disease spectrum worldwide, ranked the second most common cause of cancer death by the end of 2020. Prunus mume (PM) is an essential traditional Chinese medicine for the adjuvant treatment of solid tumors, including CRC. In the current study, we utilize means of network pharmacology, molecular docking, and multilayer experimental verification to research mechanism. The five bioactive compounds and a total of eight critical differentially expressed genes are screened out using the bioinformatics approaches of Cytoscape software, String database, Gene Ontology analysis, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathways, and molecular docking. RelA has been proven to be highly expressed in CRC. Experiments in vitro have shown that kaempferol, the main active component of PM, dramatically inhibited the growth, migration, and invasion of CRC cells, and experiments in vivo have shown that PM effectively delays CRC formation and improves the survival cycle of mice. Further analysis shows that PM inhibits the CRC progression by down-regulating the expression level of RelA, Bax, caspase 3, caspase 9, and EGFR in CRC. PM and its extract are potentially effective therapeutics for the treatment of CRC via the RelA/nuclear factor κB signaling pathway.

Anticancer activities of TCM and their active components against tumor metastasis

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has the characteristics of multiple targets, slight side effects and good therapeutic effects. Good anti-tumor effects are shown by Traditional Chinese Medicine prescription, Chinese patent medicine, single Traditional Chinese Medicine and Traditional Chinese medicine monomer compound. Clinically, TCM prolonged the survival time of patients and improved the life quality of patients, due to less side effects. Cancer metastasis is a complex process involving numerous steps, multiple genes and their products. During the process of tumor metastasis, firstly, cancer cell increases its proliferative capacity by reducing autophagy and apoptosis, and then the cancer cell capacity is stimulated by increasing the ability of tumors to absorb nutrients from the outside through angiogenesis. Both of the two steps can increase tumor migration and invasion. Finally, the purpose of tumor metastasis is achieved. By inhibiting autophagy and apoptosis of tumor cells, angiogenesis and EMT outside the tumor can inhibit the invasion and migration of cancer, and consequently achieve the purpose of inhibiting tumor metastasis. This review explores the research achievements of Traditional Chinese Medicine on breast cancer, lung cancer, hepatic carcinoma, colorectal cancer, gastric cancer and other cancer metastasis in the past five years, summarizes the development direction of TCM on cancer metastasis research in the past five years and makes a prospect for the future.

Long non‑coding RNA HOXA11‑AS accelerates cell proliferation and epithelial‑mesenchymal transition in hepatocellular carcinoma by modulating the miR‑506‑3p/Slug axis

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is an aggressively malignant type of cancer with a complex pathogenesis. Multiple studies have identified that lncRNA HOXA11-AS is involved in the development of HCC. Nevertheless, the pathological mechanisms of HOXA11-AS in the development of HCC require further investigation. In the present study, the role and underlying mechanisms of HOXA11-AS in HCC were examined. RT-qPCR revealed that HOXA11-AS expression was increased, while that of miR-506-3p was decreased in HCC tissues and cells compared with that in adjacent non-tumor tissues and normal hepatic cells. Dual-luciferase reporter assay and RNA pull-down assay indicated that HOXA11-AS directly interacted with miR-506-3p. miR-506-3p downregulation reversed the inhibitory effects of HOXA11-AS deletion on cell proliferation, invasion and epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), as shown by CCK-8 and Transwell assays, as well as western blot analysis. Bioinformatics analysis and dual-luciferase reporter assay indicated that Slug was a target gene of miR-506-3p. The overexpression of Slug reversed the effects of HOXA11-AS deletion on the viability, invasion and the EMT of HCC cells. Taken together, the present study demonstrates that HOXA11-AS functions as an oncogene to promote the progression of HCC via the miR-506-3p/Slug axis, providing a therapeutic target for patients with HCC.

MIPDH: A Novel Computational Model for Predicting microRNA-mRNA Interactions by DeepWalk on a Heterogeneous Network

Analysis of miRNA-target mRNA interaction (MTI) is of crucial significance in discovering new target candidates for miRNAs. However, the biological experiments for identifying MTIs have a high false positive rate and are high-priced, time-consuming, and arduous. It is an urgent task to develop effective computational approaches to enhance the investigation of miRNA-target mRNA relationships. In this study, a novel method called MIPDH is developed for miRNA-mRNA interaction prediction by using DeepWalk on a heterogeneous network. More specifically, MIPDH extracts two kinds of features, in which a biological behavior feature is learned using a network embedding algorithm on a constructed heterogeneous network derived from 17 kinds of associations among drug, disease, and 6 kinds of biomolecules, and the attribute feature is learned using the k-mer method on sequences of miRNAs and target mRNAs. Then, a random forest classifier is trained on the features combined with the biological behavior feature and attribute feature. When implementing a 5-fold cross-validation experiment, MIPDH achieved an average accuracy, sensitivity, specificity and AUC of 75.85, 74.37, 77.33%, and 0.8044, respectively. To further evaluate the performance of MIPDH, other classifiers and feature descriptors are conducted for comparisons. MIPDH can achieve a better performance. Additionally, case studies on hsa-miR-106b-5p, hsa-let-7d-5p, and hsa-let-7e-5p are also implemented. As a result, 14, 9, and 9 out of the top 15 targets that interacted with these miRNAs were verified using the experimental literature or other databases. All these prediction results indicate that MIPDH is an effective method for predicting miRNA-target mRNA interactions.

Extract of Stellera Chamaejasme L. Inhibits the Progression of Hepatocellular Carcinoma by Regulating miR-134-5p and JAK1/STAT3 Pathway

Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) poses a growing threat to humans due to poor prognosis. Extract of stellera chamaejasme L. (ESC) is reported to inhibit metastasis of HCC. However, the underlying mechanism of ESC in regulating the progression of HCC needs to be further investigated. Methods: 3-(4, 5-Dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay was used to measure cell proliferation. Flow cytometry was employed to check cell apoptosis. Transwell assay was conducted to assess the abilities of cell migration and invasion. The protein levels of proliferating cell nuclear antigen, cleaved caspase 3 (c-caspase 3), E-cadherin, janus kinase 1 (JAK1), signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3), and phosphorylated STAT3 were detected by Western blot. The interaction between miR-134-5p and JAK1 was predicted by starBase, which was verified by the dual-luciferase reporter assay and RNA pull-down assay. The messenger RNA levels of miR-134-5p and JAK1 were determined by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. Results: The results showed that the higher concentration or the longer time treatment of ESC led to the lower survival rate of HCC cells. Besides, ESC induced apoptosis and impeded migration and invasion of HCC cells. Moreover, downregulation of miR-134-5p inverted the effects of ESC-mediated repression on HCC progression. Further studies indicated that miR-134-5p targeted the 3'-untranslated region (3'UTR) of JAK1 and reversed JAK1-mediated impacts on HCC progression. Simultaneously, ESC inactivated JAK1/STAT3 pathway by regulating the expression of miR-134-5p. Conclusion: ESC suppressed HCC progression by upregulating the expression of miR-134-5p and blocking JAK1/STAT3 pathway.

MiRNA-106b-5p in human cancers: diverse functions and promising biomarker

MicroRNAs (miRNAs), as a class of small, well-conserved, non-coding RNA molecules, hold the capacity to post-transcriptionally suppress the expression of over 50% protein-coding genes. Emerging and accumulating evidence suggests that miRNAs function as the master regulators of multiple pathophysiological processes, and play important roles in diverse human diseases, especially in tumorigenesis and progression. MiR-106b-5p, a member of miR-106b seed family, has been demonstrated to be aberrantly expressed in human solid malignancies, and to play paradoxically opposing functions as an oncomiR or a tumor suppressor in tumor development. In addition, it has been recently reported to be a promising biomarker for prognostic evaluation for cancer patients. In the present review, we provided an overview to summarize the present findings of miR-106b-5p in cancer research fields, thereby establishing comprehensive understanding of its diverse functions and clinical implications in human cancers.

Shikonin suppresses progression and epithelial-mesenchymal transition in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cells by modulating miR-106b/SMAD7/TGF-β signaling pathway

Shikonin is a natural naphthoquinone component with antioxidant and anti-tumor function and has been used for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) treatment. According to the previous study, many herbs can regulate cancer cell progression by targeting specific microRNA (miRNA) (Liu, 2016). However, the underlying pathological mechanism of shikonin in HCC therapy is still unclear. The detection of cell growth and death rate were performed by hemacytometry and trypan blue staining, respectively. The expression of miR-106b and SMAD7 messenger RNA (mRNA) in HCC cells was evaluated by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. Cell proliferation, apoptosis, and migration ability were measured by cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8), flow cytometry, and transwell assay. The expression of proteins E-cadherin, N-cadherin, vimentin, SMAD7, TGF-β1, p-SMAD3, SMAD3, and GAPDH was examined by western blot. The interaction between SMAD7 and miR-106b was assessed by luciferase reporter system. Shikonin inhibited Huh7 and HepG2 cell growth in a dose-dependent manner while induced cell death in a time-dependent manner. In addition, the expression of miR-106b was reduced after shikonin treatment. Moreover, miR-106b attenuated the suppressive effects of shikonin on HCC cell migration and epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). SMAD7 was predicted as a target of miR-106b and the prediction was confirmed by luciferase reporter system. Additionally, we observed that SMAD7 reversed the promotive effects of miR-106b on HCC cell progression and EMT. The subsequent western blot assay revealed that shikonin could modulate SMAD7/TGF-β signaling pathway by targeting miR-106b. In conclusion, Shikonin suppresses cell progression and EMT and accelerates cell death of HCC cells via modulating miR-106b/SMAD7/TGF-β signaling pathway, suggesting shikonin could be an effective agent for HCC treatment.