Primary and Secondary micro-RNA Modulation the Extrinsic Pathway of Apoptosis in Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Abstract

—One of the most common malignant liver diseases is hepatocellular carcinoma, which has a high recurrence rate and a low five-year survival rate. It is very heterogeneous both in structure and between patients, which complicates the diagnosis, prognosis and response to treatment. In this regard, an individualized, patient-centered approach becomes important, in which the use of mimetics and hsa-miRNA inhibitors involved in the pathogenesis of the disease may be determinative. From this point of view hsa-miRNAs are of interest, their aberrant expression is associated with poor prognosis for patients and is associated with tumor progression due to dysregulation of programmed cell death (apoptosis). However, the effect of hsa-miRNA on tumor development depends not only on its direct effect on expression of genes, the primary targets, but also on secondary targets mediated by regulatory pathways. While the former are actively studied, the role of secondary targets of these hsa-miRNAs in modulating apoptosis is still unclear. The present work summarizes data on hsa-miRNAs whose primary targets are key genes of the extrinsic pathway of apoptosis. Their aberrant expression is associated with early disease relapse and poor patient outcome. For these hsa-miRNAs, using the software package ANDSystem, we reconstructed the regulation of the expression of secondary targets and analyzed their impact on the activity of the extrinsic pathway of apoptosis. The potential effect of hsa-miRNAs mediated by action on secondary targets is shown to negatively correlate with the number of primary targets. It is also shown that hsa-miR-373, hsa-miR-106b and hsa-miR-96 have the highest priority as markers of hepatocellular carcinoma, whose action on secondary targets enhances their anti-apoptotic effect.