LncSox4 promotes the self-renewal of liver tumour-initiating cells through Stat3-mediated Sox4 expression

Zhen-zhen Chen, Lan Huang, Ya-hong Wu, Wen-jie Zhai, Ping-ping Zhu () and Yan-feng Gao ()
Additional contact information
Zhen-zhen Chen: School of Life Sciences, Zhengzhou University
Lan Huang: The First Affiliated Hospital, Zhengzhou University
Ya-hong Wu: School of Life Sciences, Zhengzhou University
Wen-jie Zhai: School of Life Sciences, Zhengzhou University
Ping-ping Zhu: School of Life Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China
Yan-feng Gao: School of Life Sciences, Zhengzhou University

Nature Communications, 2016, vol. 7, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: Abstract Liver cancer has a tendency to develop asymptomatically in patients, so most patients are diagnosed at a later stage. Accumulating evidence implicates that liver tumour-initiating cells (TICs) as being responsible for liver cancer initiation and recurrence. However, the molecular mechanism of liver TIC self-renewal is poorly understood. Here we discover that a long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) termed LncSox4 is highly expressed in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) tissues and in liver TICs. We find that LncSox4 is required for liver TIC self-renewal and tumour initiation. LncSox4 interacts with and recruits Stat3 to the Sox4 promoter to initiate the expression of Sox4, which is highly expressed in liver TICs and required for liver TIC self-renewal. The expression level of Sox4 correlates with HCC development, clinical severity and prognosis of patients. Altogether, we find that LncSox4 is highly expressed in liver TICs and is required for their self-renewal.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12598 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:7:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms12598

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12598

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().