miR-3651 Participates in the Growth Cycle of Hepatocellular Carcinoma Cells and Promotes the Malignant Metastasis via the PI3K/AKT/mTOR Signalling Pathway.

Objective: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) shows a growing incidence over the past few years, and clinical efforts are made to search for more effective novel diagnosis and therapy regimen for it to improve its outcome. This study probed into the association of miR-3651 with the PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway to offer a more detailed reference to the follow-up exploration of novel diagnosis and therapy methods of HCC. Methods: Totally, 83 patients with HCC treated in our hospital between Apr. 2017 and Aug. 2018, 100 patients with simple liver cirrhosis (LC), and 94 normal persons over the same time span were enrolled, and serum miR-3651 in them was quantified to understand the predictive and prognostic significance of miR-3651 for HCC. In addition, with purchased human HCC cell strains (HepG2), the impacts of miR-3651 on the invasion as well as proliferation of HepG2 were determined using the MTT and Transwell assays, and the PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway and autophagy-associated proteins in HepG2 were quantified via WT. Results: Serum miR-3651 was found to be higher in HCC patients than in LC patients and normal persons, and it presented a sensitivity and specificity of 57.14% and 94.00%, respectively, in forecasting the occurrence of HCC in LC patients. The decrease of miR-3651 in HCC patients after therapy was strongly bound up with patients' prognosis, and its increase implied an increased risk of death. In Conclusion: miR-3651 intensifies the growth and invasion of HCC cells through activating the PI3K/AKT/mTOR signalling pathway, which is probably a breakthrough in the future diagnosis and therapy of HCC.