Journal
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Volume 18, Issue 15, Pages 5963-5977Publisher
IVYSPRING INT PUBL
DOI: 10.7150/ijbs.72982
Keywords
Hepatocellular carcinoma; Neurotrophin 3; p75NTR; Tumor suppress
Categories
Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [81770283, 82070302, 81902018, 81903001, 81772926]
- Clinical Medical Research Center of Peritoneal Cancer of Wuhan [2015060911020462]
- Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province [2019CFB109, 2020CFB708]
- Technology and Innovation Seed Found, Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University [znpy2018004]
- Medical SciTech Innovation Platform, Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University [PTXM2021022]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
This study found that NTF3 is significantly downregulated in human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and its low expression is associated with shorter survival and poor clinical outcomes. NTF3 inhibits the progression of HCC cells by activating the p75NTR and JNK/P38 MAPK pathways to induce apoptosis. Therefore, NTF3 may serve as a potential treatment molecule for HCC.
Although liver cancer is a malignant tumor with the highest mortality across the world, its pathogenesis and therapeutic targets remain unclear. Apoptosis, a natural cell death mechanism, is an important target of anticancer therapy. The discovery of effective apoptotic regulators can lead to the identification of novel therapeutic targets for treating cancer. Neurotrophin 3 (NTF3) is a member of the nerve growth factor (NGF) family that is involved in the progression of various cancers, including medulloblastoma, primitive neuroectodermal brain tumors, and breast cancer. NTF3 is under-expressed in human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), albeit its specific effects and the action mechanism have not been elucidated. Here, we confirmed that NTF3 expression was significantly low in HCC with reference to the GSEA database. By collecting patient data from our center and performing qRT-PCR analysis, we found that NTF3 expression was significantly downregulated in 74 patients with HCC. Low NTF3 expression was associated with a shorter overall survival (OS), recurrence-free survival (RFS), progression-free survival (PFS), and disease-specific survival (DSS). Both in vivo and in vitro experiments revealed that NTF3 considerably inhibited the progression of HCC cells. We found that the ligand NTF3 is regulated by c-Jun and binds to the p75 neurotrophin receptor (p75NTR) and then activates the JNK and P38 MAPK pathways to induce apoptosis. Entinostat (the target of HDAC1/HDAC3) can activate the NTF3/p75NTR pathway. These results indicate that NTF3 is a tumor suppressor, and that its low expression can help in predict poor clinical outcomes in HCC. Therefore, NTF3 can be used as a potential treatment molecule for HCC.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available