Loss-of-function mutations of microRNA-142-3p promote expression to induce immune evasion and hepatocellular carcinoma progression.

Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has been a pervasive malignancy throughout the world with elevated mortality. Efficient therapeutic targets are beneficial to treat and predict the disease. Currently, the exact molecular mechanisms leading to the progression of HCC are still unclear. Research has shown that the microRNA-142-3p level decreases in HCC, whereas bioinformatics analysis of the cancer genome atlas database shows the expression increased among liver tumor tissues. In this paper, we will explore the effects and mechanisms of microRNA-142-3p and affect the prognosis of HCC patients and HCC cell bioactivity, and the association between them.

Aim: To investigate the effects and mechanisms of microRNA-142-3p and on the HCC cell bioactivity and prognosis of HCC patients.

Methods: In this study, we grouped HCC patients according to their immunohistochemistry results of with pathological tissues, and retrospectively analyzed the prognosis of HCC patients. Furthermore, explored the roles and mechanisms of microRNA-142-3p and by cellular and animal experiments, which involved the following experimental methods: Immunohistochemical staining, western blot, quantitative real-time-polymerase chain reaction, flow cytometric analysis, tumor xenografts in nude mice, . The statistical methods involved in this study contained -test, one-way analysis of variance, the test, the Kaplan-Meier approach and the log-rank test.

Results: In this study, we found that HCC patients with high expression of possess a more recurrence rate as well as a decreased overall survival rate. promotes the tumorigenicity of HCC and microRNA-142-3p exhibits reduced expression in HCC tissues and interacts with through targeting the 3'untranslated region. Furthermore, microRNA-142-3p promotes apoptosis and inhibits proliferation, invasion, and migration of HCC cell lines . For the exploration mechanism, we found may promote an immunosuppressive microenvironment in HCC and affects the expression of the cell junction protein zonula occludens-1, which is potentially relevant to the immune system.

Conclusion: Loss function of microRNA-142-3p induces cancer progression and immune evasion through upregulation of in HCC. Both microRNA-142-3p and can feature as new biomarker for HCC in the future.