Overexpression of MiR-452-5p in hepatocellular carcinoma tissues and its prospective signaling pathways

Background: The implication of miR-452-5p and its prospective machinery in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains largely unknown. For this reason, this study aimed to inspect the clinical implication of miR-452-5p expression in HCC tissues with multiple detection approaches, to analyze its potential function via in silico methods, and to validate this using a dual-luciferase reporter assay. Methods: The assessment of the expression level of miR-452-5p in HCC was conducted via four methods: 1) in-house real-time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR), 2) miRNA-sequencing (miRNA-seq) from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), 3) miRNA microarrays from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), and 4) comprehensive meta-analyses calculating the standard mean difference (SMD) and summary of receiver operator characteristic (sROC). Following the target prediction, one of the potential targets of miR-452-5p was validated through a dual-luciferase reporter assay. Results: MiR-452-5p was consistently elevated in HCC tissues via various detection methods, including in-house RT-qPCR, miRNA-seq, and miRNA microarrays. The final SMD was 0.842 for 820 cases of HCC samples. Simultaneously, the area under curve (AUC) of the sROC was 0.80 (0.76-0.83). The 1,135 predicted targets of miR-452-5p were enriched in the pathways of cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction, carbon metabolism, and complement and coagulation cascades. Among these predicted targets, CDKN1B was verified to be a real target of miR-452-5p. Conclusion: The overexpression of miR-452-5p may play a pivotal role in the carcinogenesis of HCC via targeting multiple signaling pathways and genes. The function and molecular machinery of miR-452-5p in HCC requires further in-depth exploration.