The high expression level of HOTAIR in HCC could be a candidate biomarker for predicting tumor recurrence in HCC patients who have undergone liver transplant therapy and might be a potential therapeutic target.

This study is the first to characterise gut microbiome in patients with HCC and to report the successful diagnosis model establishment and cross-region validation of microbial markers for HCC. Gut microbiota-targeted biomarkers represent potential non-invasive tools for early diagnosis of HCC.

Metastasis-associated lung adenocarcinoma transcript 1(MALAT1), a long non-coding RNA (lncRNA), is up-regulated in many solid tumors and associated with cancer metastasis and recurrence. However, its role in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains poorly understood. In the present study, we evaluated the expression of MALAT1 by quantitative real-time PCR in 9 liver cancer cell lines and 112 HCC cases including 60 cases who received liver transplantation (LT) with complete follow-up data. Moreover, small interfering RNA (siRNA) was used to inhibit MALAT1 expression to investigate its biological role in tumor progression. We found that MALAT1 was up-regulated in both cell lines and clinical tissue samples. Patients with high expression level of MALAT1 had a significantly increased risk of tumor recurrence after LT, particularly in patients who exceeded the Milan criteria. On multivariate analysis, MALAT1 was an independent prognostic factor for predicting HCC recurrence (hazard ratio, 3.280, P = 0.003).In addition, inhibition of MALAT1 in HepG2 cells could effectively reduce cell viability, motility, invasiveness, and increase the sensitivity to apoptosis. Our data suggest that lncRNA MALAT1 play an important role in tumor progression and could be a novel biomarker for predicting tumor recurrence after LT and serve as a promising therapeutic target.

Recently increasing reported data have suggested that only a small subset of cancer cells possess capability to initiate malignancies including leukemia and solid tumors, which was based on investigation in these cells displaying a distinct surface marker pattern within the primary cancers. CD133 is a putative hematopoietic and neuronal stem-cell marker, which was also considered as a tumorigenic marker in brain and prostate cancer. We hypothesized that CD133 was a marker closely correlated with tumorigenicity, since it was reported that CD133 expressed in human fetal liver and repairing liver tissues, which tightly associated with hepatocarcinogenesis. Our findings showed that a small population of CD133 positive cells indeed exists in human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cell lines and primary HCC tissues. From SMMC-7721 cell line, CD133 1 cells isolated by MACS manifested high tumorigenecity and clonogenicity as compared with CD133 2 HCC cells. The implication that CD133 might be one of the markers for HCC cancer stem-like cells needed further investigation. ' 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Background N6-methyladenosine (m6A) methylation, a well-known modification with new epigenetic functions, has been reported to participate in the tumorigenesis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), providing novel insights into the molecular pathogenesis of this disease. However, as the key component of m6A methylation, Wilms tumor 1-associated protein (WTAP) has not been well studied in HCC. Here we investigated the biological role and underlying mechanism of WTAP in liver cancer. Methods We determined the expression of WTAP and its correlation with clinicopathological features using tissue microarrays and the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) dataset. And we clarified the effects of WTAP on HCC cells using cell proliferation assay, colony formation, Edu assay and subcutaneous xenograft experiments. We then applied RNA sequencing combined with gene expression omnibus (GEO) data to screen candidate targets of WTAP. Finally, we investigated the regulatory mechanism of WTAP in HCC by m6A dot blot assay, methylated RNA immunoprecipitation (MeRIP) assay, dual luciferase reporter assay, RNA immunoprecipitation (RIP) assay and Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) assay. Results We demonstrated that WTAP was highly expressed in HCC which indicated the poor prognosis, and that WTAP expression served as an independent predictor of HCC survival. Functionally, WTAP promoted the proliferation capability and tumor growth of HCC cells in vitro and in vivo. Furthermore, ETS proto-oncogene 1 (ETS1) was identified as the downstream effector of WTAP. The m6A modification regulated by WTAP led to post-transcriptional suppression of ETS1, with the implication of Hu-Antigen R (HuR) as an RNA stabilizer. Then ETS1 was found to inhibit the progression of HCC and could rescue the phenotype induced by WTAP deficiency. Moreover, WTAP modulated the G2/M phase of HCC cells through a p21/p27-dependent pattern mediated by ETS1. Conclusion We have identified that WTAP is significantly up-regulated in HCC and promotes liver cancer development. WTAP-guided m6A modification contributes to the progression of HCC via the HuR-ETS1-p21/p27 axis. Our study is the first to report that WTAP-mediated m6A methylation has a crucial role in HCC oncogenesis, and highlights WTAP as a potential therapeutic target of HCC treatment. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12943-019-1053-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.