Molecular mechanism of HEIH and HULC in the proliferation and invasion of hepatoma cells

Objective: To study the expression and molecular mechanism of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNA) including HEIH and HULC in proliferation and invasion of hepatoma cells. Methods: We detected the expression of HEIH and HULC in hepatocellular carcinoma cell line (MHCC97L and HepG2), as well as in human normal hepatocyte line (cHL-7702) by real-time PCR. Using MTT and transwell, we investigated the effect of HEIH and HULC on proliferation and invasion of hepatoma cells with siRNA and expression plasmid. To explore the molecular mechanism, we use western blot to reveal the role of HEIH and HULC in tumor invasion related gene expression. Results: The expression of HEIH and HULC in hepatocellular carcinoma cell line was significantly increased compared with human normal hepatocyte line (P<0.05). The expression of HULC in HepG2 was higher than that in MHCC97L. The over-expression of HULC could enhance proliferation of MHCC97L and HepG2, however, the over-expression of HEIH could not. The over-expression of HULC and HEIH could promote invasion of MHCC97L and HepG2. Invasion of MHCC97L and HepG2 did not have significant change after down-regulating of HEIH and HULC by siRNA. Over-expression of HULC up-regulated the expression of Snail in HepG2. Conclusions: The expression of HEIH and HULC increased significantly in hepatocellular carcinoma cell line compared with that in human normal hepatocyte line. HULC could promote proliferation of hepatoma cells. HEIH and HULC play an important role in the invasion of hepatocellular carcinoma cell.