ABSTRACT
Objective:To investigate the effect of lncRNA AC132217.4 on the proliferation and invasion of liver cancer MHCC97-H cells and its molecular mechanism.Methods:The TCGA database was used to analyze the differential expression of AC132217.4 in liver cancer tissue and adjacent tissue, and to analyze the relationship between the expression level of AC132217.4 and the overall survival of liver cancer patients. Transfection of pcDNA-AC132217.4 plasmid into MHCC97-H cells was defined as AC132217.4 group, transfection of pcDNA plasmid into MHCC97-H cells was defined as negative control (NC) group, respectively. The proliferation and invasion ability of MHCC97-H cells were detected by MTT method and Matrigel invasion assay. The binding site between AC132217.4 and miR-18a-5p was analyzed by starBase v2.0 software and dual luciferase reporter gene assay. Real-time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) detected the differential expression of miR-18a-5p in the two groups of MHCC97-H cells. The expression of epithelial-mesenchymal transition protein was detected by Western-blotting. Measurement data with normal distribution were expressed as mean±standard deviation ( ± s), and t-test was used for comparison between the two groups. Results:Compared with adjacent tissues, the expression of AC132217.4 was down-regulated in liver cancer tissues ( P<0.01). Compared with liver cancer patients with low expression of AC132217.4, the overall survival of liver cancer patients with high AC132217.4 expression was longer ( P<0.05). The pcDNA-AC132217.4 plasmid significantly inhibited the proliferation of MHCC97-H cells ( P<0.05). The number of invasive cells in the NC group and AC132217.4 group were (131.30±12.55) and (37.45±7.77), respectively. The pcDNA-AC132217.4 plasmid significantly inhibited the invasive ability of MHCC97-H cells ( t=6.36, P<0.01). AC132217.4 directly complemented miR-18a-5p ( P<0.01). The expression of miR-18a-5p in MHCC97-H cells in AC132217.4 group (1.04±0.30) was significantly lower than that in NC group (6.13±0.75) ( t=6.27, P<0.01). Compared with the NC group, the expressions of epithelial phenotype proteins Cytokeratin and Claudin-1 in MHCC97-H cells in AC132217.4 group were up-regulated, while the expressions of mesenchymal phenotype proteins Vimentin, Slug and Snail were down-regulated. Conclusions:The expression of AC132217.4 is low in liver cancer tissue, and it is related to the overall survival of liver cancer patients. AC132217.4 might inhibit the proliferation and invasion of liver cancer MHCC97-H cells by sponge miR-18a-5p.