Prognostic value of hsa-mir-299 and hsa-mir-7706 in hepatocellular carcinoma

This study aimed to investigate the expression of microRNA (miRNA) 299 and miRNA-7706 in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and to explore their effects on proliferation of SK-HEP-1 HCC cells. Expression of miRNA-299 and miRNA-7706 in tumor tissue (HCC group) and adjacent healthy tissue (>30 mm away from the tumor tissue) of 179 patients with HCC was determined by real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). miR-299 mimics and miR-7706 mimics were transfected into SK-HEP-1 HCC cells by RNA transfection. The proliferation and invasion of SK-HEP-1 cells were detected by CCK-8 kit and Transwell kit, respectively. Compared with adjacent tissues, expression levels of miRNA-299 and miRNA-7706 in HCC group were significantly downregulated. Analyses on the correlation between the expression of miRNA-299 and miRNA-7706 and clinical factors showed that expression levels of miRNA-299 and miRNA-7706 were significantly correlated with pathological stages and lymph node metastasis. ROC curve analysis showed that the areas under the curve were 0.837 and 0.845 for miRNA-299 and miRNA-7706 in the prediction of HCC, respectively. Survival analysis showed that the 5-year overall survival rate of patients with high expression levels of miRNA-299 and miRNA-7706 was significantly different from that of patients with low expression levels (P=0.016). Compared with cells transfected with scramble mimics, proliferation and invasion abilities of SK-HEP-1 cells transfected with miR-299 mimics and miRNA-7706 were significantly weakened. Results suggested that downregulation of miRNA-299 and miRNA-7706 can inhibit the proliferation of HCC cells and can be used as a new target for the treatment of HCC.