The Circular RNA has-circ-0001445 Regulates the Proliferation and Migration of Hepatocellular Carcinoma and May Serve as a Diagnostic Biomarker

Abstract

Circular RNAs (circRNA), a class of noncoding RNAs, have been found to be involved in various diseases. Here, the expression levels of the circRNA hsa-circ-0001445 in 73 pairs of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and adjacent nontumor tissues were investigated by quantitative real-Time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). Our data demonstrate that the has-circ-0001445 levels were significantly decreased in HCC tissues (P<0.001) and markedly associated with the number of tumor foci (P=0.014). Furthermore, in vitro approaches showed that overexpression of has-circ-0001445 promoted apoptosis and inhibited proliferation, migration, and invasion of HCC-derived cells, suggesting that has-circ-0001445 might be involved in the development of HCC. In addition, we found that the plasma has-circ-0001445 transcription levels in HCC patients were lower than those in cirrhosis (P<0.001) and hepatitis B (P<0.001) patients as well as in healthy controls (P<0.001). In fact, receiver operating characteristic curve analysis indicated that plasma has-circ-0001445 could be a fairly accurate marker to distinguish HCC cases from healthy controls as well as patients with cirrhosis or hepatitis B.