LncRNA HOXA11‐AS promotes hepatocellular carcinoma progression by repressing miR‐214‐3p

Accumulating studies supported that lncRNAs played important roles in tumorigenesis. LncRNA HOXA11‐AS was a novel lncRNA that has been proved to involved in several tumours. However, the role of HOXA11‐AS in the development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains to be explained. In our study, we showed that HOXA11‐AS expression was up‐regulated in the HCC tissues, and the higher expression of HOXA11‐AS was associated with the advanced stage in the HCC samples. In addition, we indicated that the expression of HOXA11‐AS was up‐regulated in HCC cell lines (Hep3B, SMMC‐7721, MHCC97‐H and BEL‐7402) compared with normal liver cell lines (HL‐7702). Overexpression of HOXA11‐AS promoted HCC proliferation and invasion and induced the epithelial‐mesenchymal transition (EMT) and knockdown of HOXA11‐AS suppressed the HCC cell proliferation and invasion. However, we showed that miR‐214‐3p expression was down‐regulated in the HCC tissues and cell lines. Ectopic expression of miR‐214‐3p suppressed HCC cell proliferation and invasion. Furthermore, we indicated that overexpression of HOXA11‐AS decreased the miR‐214‐3p expression and the expression of miR‐214‐3p was negatively related with the HOXA11‐AS expression in HCC samples. Ectopic expression of HOXA11‐AS increased HCC proliferation and invasion and induced EMT through inhibiting miR‐214‐3p expression. These data suggested that HOXA11‐AS/miR‐214‐3p axis was responsible for development of HCC.