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Research Paper|Volume 13, Issue 9|pp 12766—12779

Morphine may act via DDX49 to inhibit hepatocellular carcinoma cell growth

Huijun Dai1,2, Jifeng Feng3, Zhenhua Nan1, Lijuan Wei1, Fei Lin1,2, Ren Jin1, Suisui Zhang1, Xiaoxia Wang3, Linghui Pan1,2
  • 1Department of Anesthesiology, Guangxi Medical University Cancer Hospital, Nanning 530021, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China
  • 2Perioperative Medical Research Center of Guangxi Medical University Cancer Hospital, Nanning 530021, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China
  • 3Department of Anesthesiology, Guangxi Maternal and Child Health Hospital, Nanning 530021, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China
* Co-first authors
Received: September 21, 2020Accepted: December 29, 2020Published: May 5, 2021
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.202946

Copyright: © 2021 Dai 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

Pain in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a frequent cause of low quality of life, and morphine is routinely used as a first-line opiate analgesic in HCC. Morphine may exert not only analgesic effects but also anti-cancer effects via unknown mechanisms. Here we show that morphine can inhibit HCC cell proliferation. We further show that DEAD-box helicase 49 (DDX49) is up-regulated in HCC tumors, and that knocking down the DDX49 gene decreases tumor formation in vivo and in vitro, as well as reduces tumor metastasis in vivo. Morphine decreases DDX49 expression in HCC cells. Our results suggest that DDX49 contributes to HCC, and that morphine may exert anti-cancer effects by down-regulating it.