Upregulation of microRNA miR-652-3p is a prognostic risk factor for hepatocellular carcinoma and regulates cell proliferation, migration, and invasion

As powerful regulatory factors, microRNAs (miRNAs) are involved in tumor progression. The current research aimed to excavate the prognostic significance and potential regulatory mechanisms of miR-652-3p in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Expression of miR-652-3p in HCC tissues and cells was exposed by Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) assay, and we found that miR-652-3p was elevated in HCC tissues and cells than in the control group (<i>P</i> &lt; 0.05). Then, the relationship between miR-652-3p levels and clinical characteristics was obtained from the Chi-square test. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and Cox regression model to explore the outcome of miR-652-3p on the prognosis of HCC. The results investigated that overexpression of miR-652-3p was related to clinical tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) stage (<i>P</i> = 0.020) and differentiation (<i>P</i> = 0.031). HCC patients with elevated miR-652-3p levels were correlated with poor overall survival (log-rank, <i>P</i> = 0.007), and maybe a possible prognostic marker for HCC. Finally, CCK-8, colony formation, wound healing and Transwell assay was detected after transfection of HCC cells with miR-652-3p mimic or inhibitor. And the results confirmed that elevation miR-652-3p promoted the proliferation, migration, and invasion of tumor cells (<i>P</i> &lt; 0.05). All data indicated that elevated miR-652-3p is a prognostic marker and would be able to participate in tumor progression of HCC by regulating cell proliferation, migration, and invasion.