Investigation of Circular RNA Expression Profiles in Ultrasound-guided Incomplete Radiofrequency Ablation Transplanted Tumor Models of Human Liver Cancer.

Background: Abnormally expressed circular RNAs (circRNAs) are associated with many diseases and have important biological effects on the regulation of gene expression. However, the circRNA expression profile in incomplete radiofrequency ablation (RFA)-treated liver cancer (LC) patients has not been characterized. This study investigated the potential biological effects of differentially expressed (DE) circRNAs in an incomplete RFA-treated transplantation tumor model of human LC.
Material/methods: A circRNA microarray was utilized to analyze changes in the circRNA expression profiles. CircRNA host gene ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analyses were also conducted using computational biology. Quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) was also performed on the selected DE-circRNAs to verify the reliability of the microarray. The circRNA/miRNA interactions were predicted by Arraystar software and confirmed by a dual-luciferase assay.
Results: Following RFA incomplete ablation, 76 DE-circRNAs were detected (|fold change |>1.5, P-value < 0.05), 21 of which were upregulated and 55 of which were downregulated. Computational biological analysis revealed that the T-cell receptor signaling pathway was the most significantly enriched pathway of the genes related to altered expression, as indicated by enrichment of LCK, AKT3 and DLG1. PCR results for the upregulated hsa&#95;circRNA&#95;103595 and downregulated hsa&#95;circRNA&#95;001264 indicated that the circRNA microarray sequencing results were reliable. Double luciferase reporter assays confirmed that hsa-miR-185-3p was the target miRNA of hsa&#95;circRNA&#95;103595.
Conclusions: The current study confirmed the changes in the expression profiles of circRNAs in tumor transplantation models after incomplete ablation, these changes may play a crucial role in the pathophysiological process of residual cancer transplantation tumors. These findings could lead to new directions for investigating the molecular biological mechanisms underlying RFA-treated LC as well as new ideas for treating LC by regulating circRNAs.
Competing Interests: Declarations. Ethics Approval and Consent to Participate: All animal procedures were approved by the animal care and experiment committee of Guangxi Medical University. All experiments were performed in accordance with the experimental animal care and use guidelines of the USA’s National Institutes of Health. This study complies with ARRIVE guidelines ( https://arriveguidelines.org ). Consent for Publication: Not applicable. Conflict of Interest: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
(© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)