CircMMP11 as a prognostic biomarker mediates miR-361-3p/HMGB1 axis to accelerate malignant progression of hepatocellular carcinoma

As a high metastatic tumor, patients having hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) show poor prognosis. The carcinogenic roles of circMMP11 are generally described in the development of other cancers. However, there is a lack of studies on its involvement in HCC. Therefore, we investigated the potential role and molecular mechanisms of CircMMP11 in the development of HCC in vitro, providing preliminary evidence for the clinical treatment of HCC. First, we examined the expression of CircMMP11 in HCC tissues and cell lines in both clinical and in vitro experiments. We then used a loss-of-function assay to determine CircMMP11’s regulatory role on the malignant characteristics of HCC cells. The results showed that high expression of CircMMP11 in HCC was associated with patient overall survival. Serum CircMMP11 had good diagnostic efficacy in distinguishing HCC patients from the control group. In vitro, inhibiting CircMMP11 suppressed the malignant characteristics of human HCC cell lines by directly sequestering miR-361-3p, which further affected the downstream gene HMGB1 expression. In addition, we knocked down CircMMP11 and found that its deletion inhibited the malignant characteristics of HCC cells through the miR-361-3p/HMGB1 axis.