The New Role of HNF1A-NAS1/miR-214/INHBA Signaling Axis in Colorectal Cancer

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most common cancer and one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Seriously threatens human life and health. Previous studies have identified that inhibin βA ( ) could induce tumorgenesis and progression of CRC through the regulation of the TGF-β/Smad signal axis. The abnormal expression of is related to the poor prognosis of patients. The aim of this study was to identify the molecular mechanism of and regulating and carcinogenesis through bioinformatics combined with experiments. The expression of , , in pan-cancer and CRC were investigated in the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). The correlation between and immune-related genes or miRNAs was explored via the Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis (GEPIA) and volcano plots, respectively. The association between and differentially expressed miRNAs was constructed by TargetScan. The miRDB, miRWalk, and TargetScan databases were utilized to predict the target genes of . The expression of in tissues and cell lines of CRC was examined by RT-qPCR and western blot assay. The and expressions were increased in Colon adenocarcinoma (COAD) and Rectum adenocarcinoma (READ) of the TCGA database. was relatively less expressed in CRC tissues compared with para-cancer tissues. The expression of was negatively correlated with . was one of the target genes of based on miRDB, miRWalk, and TargetScan databases. The specific binding sites of INHBA-3'UTR and were identified by starBase. The expression level of was positively correlated with the T stage of tumor and negatively correlated with overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) in CRC patients. The results of RT-qPCR and western blot indicated that the expression of in tissues and cell lines in CRC was higher than those in para-carcinoma tissues and normal colon cell lines, respectively. These findings suggested that and were key upstream non-coding RNAs of . The / signal axis plays a significant role in the tumorgenesis and progression of CRC. By interfering with and genes on HT29 and SW480 cells, it was found that and genes may be important target genes in CRC.