Research Paper Volume 13, Issue 4 pp 5585—5606
TMEM106C contributes to the malignant characteristics and poor prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma
- 1 Biliary Tract Surgery Department, Eastern Hepatobiliary Surgery Hospital, Second Military Medical University, Shanghai 200438, PR China
- 2 Department of Pathology, Eastern Hepatobiliary Surgery Hospital, Second Military Medical University, Shanghai 200438, PR China
- 3 Department of Anesthesiology, Shanghai Yangpu District Central Hospital, Shanghai Tongji University, Shanghai 200090, PR China
Received: September 5, 2019 Accepted: September 3, 2020 Published: February 11, 2021
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.202487How to Cite
Copyright: © 2021 Duan et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Transmembrane protein (TMEM) is a kind of integral membrane protein that spans biological membranes. The functions of most members of the TMEM family are unknown. Here, we conducted bioinformatic analysis and biological validation to investigate the role of TMEM106C in HCC. First, GEPIA and OncomineTM were used to analyze TMEM106C expression, which was verified by real-time PCR and western blot analyses. Then, the biological functions of TMEM106C were explored by CCK8 and transwell assays. The prognostic value of TMEM106C was analyzed by UALCAN. LinkedOmics was used to analyze TMEM106C pathways generated by Gene Ontology. A protein-protein interaction network (PPI) was constructed by GeneMANIA. We demonstrated that TMEM106C was overexpressed in HCC and that inhibition of TMEM106C significantly suppressed the proliferation and metastasis of HCC through targeting CENPM and DLC-1. Upregulation of TMEM106C was closely correlated with sex, tumor stage, tumor grade and prognosis. Overexpression of TMEM106C was linked to functional networks involving organelle fission and cell cycle signaling pathways through the regulation of CDK kinases, E2F1 transcription factors and miRNAs. Our data demonstrated that TMEM106C contributes to malignant characteristics and poor prognosis in HCC, which may serve as a prognostic biomarker and potential therapeutic target.