Loss of tumor suppressor miR-126 contributes to the development of hepatitis B virus–related hepatocellular carcinoma metastasis through the upregulation of ADAM9

摘要

Hepatocellular carcinoma is the most common histological type of primary liver cancer, which represents the second leading cause of cancer-related mortality. MiR-126 was reported to be downregulated in hepatocellular carcinoma tissues, compared with its levels in noncancerous tissues. However, baseline miR-126 expression levels in hepatitis B virus–related hepatocellular carcinoma patients who did not undergo pre-operational treatment remains unknown since hepatitis B virus infection and pre-operational transcatheter arterial chemoembolization were shown to upregulate miR-126 expression. Here, we demonstrated that miR-126 is generally downregulated in a homogeneous population of pre-operational treatment–na?ve hepatitis B virus–related hepatocellular carcinoma patients (84.0%, 84/100), and its expression is significantly associated with pre-operational alpha-fetoprotein levels (p p p p