Analysis of the role of in the development and progression of hepatocellular carcinoma.

Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common and deadly cancers worldwide. POC1 centriolar protein A () is a gene encoding a protein that plays a key role in the centrosome, and is one of the two isoforms of POC1. To date, the expression of in HCC and its potential as a biomarker and tumor therapeutic target have not been examined. This study aimed to explore the effect of on patients with HCC and its potential mechanism.

Methods: This study investigated the role of in the occurrence and development of HCC. It analyzed the expression of in various types of HCC patients and its effect on survival using HCC patient information from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), the Human Protein Atlas (HPA), and the Hepatocellular Carcinoma Cell DataBase (HCCDB). It then explored the major enrichment pathways and gene functions of in HCC using the gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) method and examined its protein-protein interactions (PPIs). Finally, it predicted the potential transcription factors (TFs) and target microRNAs (miRNAs) of , and analyzed the single nucleotide variation (SNV) and copy number variation (CNV) mutations of and the related genes in HCC, as well as their effects on immune cells.

Results: The results showed that was significantly overexpressed in HCC and was significantly associated with a poor prognosis. The Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analyses indicated that was mainly involved in the regulation of cell-cycle pathways and chromosome segregation functions. showed significant interactions with NUDC and PPARG, and they both had different numbers of SNV and CNV mutations in the HCC samples. In relation to immunity, the high expression of and its reciprocal genes may play an important role in B cells and macrophages.

Conclusions: In general, our findings suggest that overexpression could have an important effect on the development of HCC by regulating cell-cycle pathways, and that it could serve as a novel prognostic biomarker and a potential therapeutic target for HCC.