UCK2 regulated by miR-139-3p regulates the progression of hepatocellular carcinoma cells

A prognostic and immune related risk model based on zinc homeostasis in hepatocellular carcinoma

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. The dysfunction of zinc homeostasis participates in the early and advancing malignancy of HCC. However, the prognostic ability of zinc homeostasis in HCC has not been clarified yet. Here, we showed a zinc-homeostasis related risk model in HCC. Five signature genes including ADAMTS5, PLOD2, PTDSS2, KLRB1, and UCK2 were screened out via survival analyses and regression algorithms to construct the nomogram with clinical characteristics. Experimental researches indicated that UCK2 participated in the progression of HCC. Patients with higher risk scores always had worse outcomes and were more associated with immune suppression according to the analyses of immune related-pathway activation, cell infiltration, and gene expression. Moreover, these patients were likely to exhibit more sensitivity to sorafenib and other antitumor drugs. This study highlights the significant prognostic role of zinc homeostasis and suggests potential treatment strategies in HCC.

Development and evaluation of a risk score model based on a WNT score gene-associated signature for predicting the clinical outcome and the tumour microenvironment of hepatocellular carcinoma

Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is currently one of the most life-threatening diseases worldwide. However, the factors, genes, and processes involved in the mechanisms of HCC initiation, development, and metastasis remain to be identified.Methods: WNT signalling pathways may play important roles in cancer initiation and progression. Thus, it would be informative to construct a WNT signature-based gene model for the prognosis of HCC and the prediction of therapeutic efficacy. We curated genomic profiles for HCC from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and divided them into training and internal validation datasets. We also used samples from GSE14520 and HCCDB18 as validation datasets and clustered them by ConsensusClusterPlus analysis. We applied WebGestaltR to the WNT score-associated differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and conducted a signalling pathway enrichment analysis. We assessed the tumour immune microenvironment with ESTIMATE, Microenvironment Cell Populations (MCP)-counter, single-sample gene set enrichment analysis (ssGSEA), and tumour immune dysfunction and exclusion (TIDE).Results: We performed a least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression analysis to identify the prognosis-related hub genes, identified the risk and protective factor genes associated with HCC, classified them into two clusters, and found that Cluster 2 had a significantly better prognosis than Cluster 1. Moreover, the latter had advanced clinical features compared with the former. Uridine-cytosine kinase 1 (UCK1), myristoylated alanine-rich C-kinase substrate-like protein 1 (MARCKSL1), P-antigen family member 1 (PAGE1), and killer cell lectin-like receptor B1 (KLRB1) were detected and used to construct a simplified prognostic model for HCC. The high risk score subgroup showed a poorer prognosis than the low risk score subgroup, and the model assessed HCC prognosis consistently and effectively.Conclusions: The WNT score-related gene-based model designed and evaluated herein had strong prognostic and predictive ability for HCC and could, therefore, facilitate decision-making in the prognosis and therapeutic efficacy assessment of HCC.

The Metabolic and Non-Metabolic Roles of UCK2 in Tumor Progression

Enhanced nucleoside metabolism is one of the hallmarks of cancer. Uridine-cytidine kinase 2 (UCK2) is a rate-limiting enzyme of the pyrimidine salvage synthesis pathway to phosphorylate uridine and cytidine to uridine monophosphate (UMP) and cytidine monophosphate (CMP), respectively. Recent studies have shown that UCK2 is overexpressed in many types of solid and hematopoietic cancers, closely associates with poor prognosis, and promotes cell proliferation and migration in lung cancer and HCCs. Although UCK2 is thought to catalyze sufficient nucleotide building blocks to support the rapid proliferation of tumor cells, we and other groups have recently demonstrated that UCK2 may play a tumor-promoting role in a catalytic independent manner by activating oncogenic signaling pathways, such as STAT3 and EGFR-AKT. By harnessing the catalytic activity of UCK2, several cytotoxic ribonucleoside analogs, such as TAS-106 and RX-3117, have been developed for UCK2-mediated cancer chemotherapy. Moreover, we have demonstrated that the concurrent targeting of the catalytic dependent and independent features of UCK2 could synergistically inhibit tumor growth. These findings suggest that UCK2 may serve as a potential therapeutic target for cancer treatment. In this mini-review, we introduced the genomic localization and protein structure of UCK2, described the role of UCK2 in tumor development, discussed the application of UCK2 in anti-tumor treatment, and proposed concurrent targeting of the catalytic and non-catalytic roles of UCK2 as a potential therapeutic strategy for cancer treatment.