High expression of microRNA-1266 in hepatocellular carcinoma is associated with poor prognosis of patients and biological cell growth.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a cancer with a poor prognosis and a low survival rate. Previous studies have found that microRNA-1266 (miR-1266) is associated with tumorigenesis and progression of several types of cancer, such as breast cancer and gastric cancer. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of miR-1266 on the clinical prognosis and biological behavior of HCC. For this purpose, reverse transcription-quantitative PCR was used to detect the expression of miR-1266 in HCC tissues and HCC cell lines. In addition, Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and Cox regression analysis were used to evaluate the prognostic value of miR-1266. Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK-8) and Transwell assays were used to analyze the effect of miR-1266 on the biological behavior of cells. The aforementioned assays demonstrated that the examined HCC tissues had a significant upregulation of miR-1266 expression compared with normal tissues (P<0.001). The overexpression of miR-1266 was significantly associated with Tumor-Node-Metastasis stage (P=0.014). The results of the Kaplan-Meier analysis indicated that the 5-year overall survival rate of patients with high expression of miR-1266 was significantly lower compared with patients with low expression of miR-1266 (P=0.015). Cox regression analysis demonstrated that the expression level of miR-1266 could be used as an independent prognostic factor of HCC. CCK-8 and Transwell assays demonstrated that overexpression of miR-1266 promoted the proliferation, migration and invasion of HCC cells. In summary, the findings of the present study indicated that high expression of miR-1266 was positively associated with poor prognosis of patients with HCC and promoted cell proliferation, migration and invasion of HCC cells. miR-1266 may be used as a biomarker for HCC prognosis.