DANCR Acts as a Diagnostic Biomarker and Promotes Tumor Growth and Metastasis in Hepatocellular Carcinoma.

BACKGROUND: Long non-coding RNA differentiation antagonizing non-protein coding RNA (DANCR) is considered to be an oncogene in many cancer types. However, the role of DANCR in diagnosis and progression of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is still unknown.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: In this study, 146 participants including healthy volunteers (HVs) and patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB), cirrhosis and HCC were recruited.

RESULTS: Firstly, quantitative reverse transcription-PCR analysis showed that DANCR was up-regulated in tumor tissues and plasma of patients with HCC, and its expression was highly correlated with microvascular and liver capsule invasion of HCC. Receiver operating characteristic analysis showed that plasma DANCR exhibited significantly increased discriminatory power for differentiating patients with HCC from HVs and non-HCC patients compared to alpha fetoprotein, which has been used as a biomarker for HCC diagnosis. Furthermore, knockdown of DANCR repressed the β-catenin pathway and inhibited HCC cell proliferation and metastasis both in vitro and in vivo.

CONCLUSION: This study revealed, for the first time, the importance of DANCR in clinical diagnosis and disease progression of HCC.