Research Paper|Volume 15, Issue 10|pp 4071—4083

lncRNA PITPNA-AS1 promotes cell proliferation and metastasis in hepatocellular carcinoma by upregulating PDGFD

Jianguo Yao¹, Xiaojian Liu¹

¹Department of Surgery, Tongxiang First People’s Hospital, Tongxiang 314500, Zhejiang, P.R. China

Received: October 10, 2021Accepted: February 11, 2023Published: March 2, 2023

https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.204566

Copyright: © 2023 Yao and Liu. 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

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) ranks high in morbidity and mortality among notorious malignancies because of the lack of effective biomarkers and treatments. LncRNA PITPNA antisense RNA 1 (PITPNA-AS1) plays an oncogenic role in HCC, yet the mechanistic basis remains unprobed. Here using Bioinformatics and PCR analyses, we validated that PITPNA-AS1 expression was significantly increased in HCC. The levels of PITPNA-AS1 in tumors were reversely correlated with the prognosis in HCC patients. Downregulation of PITPNA-AS1 inhibited malignant activities of HCC cells. Next, we elucidated that PITPNA-AS1 acts as a competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) to sponge miR-363-5p, thereby regulating the expression of platelet-derived growth factor-D (PDGFD). Moreover, the suppression of HCC cell activities by PITPNA-AS1 downregulation can be removed by PDGFD overexpression or miR-363-5p inhibition. Collectively, our work reveals the involvement of the PITPNA-AS1/miR-363-5p/PDGFD regulatory axis in HCC progression.