| خلاصه مقاله | Introduction
With the introduction of immune checkpoint inhibitors into clinical practice as the standard of care for first-line treatment of advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), research into the molecular basis of their therapeutic efficacy has become essential in order to develop more individually tailored combinational therapy for HCC patients (1, 2). In this way, we aimed to investigate the effect of small interfering RNA (siRNA)- mediated programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) silencing on the viability, proliferation, and migration of HCC cells.
Materials and Methods
HCC cells (HepG2) were transfected with PD-L1 siRNA and subjected to RT-PCR to evaluate the transfection efficiency. The viability of HepG2 cells was then investigated using the MTT assay. Following that, flow cytometry was used to assess HepG2 cell proliferation and cell cycle arrest, and the scratch wound healing assay was applied to evaluate cell migration. Finally, RT-PCR was used to quantify the expression level of the proliferationrelated gene c-Myc and the metastasis-related gene MMP-9.
Results
The PD-L1 siRNA could significantly downregulate PD-L1 mRNA expression in HepG2 cells. It resulted in a significant decrease in the viability of HepG2 cells. Likewise, PD-L1 siRNA was found to arrest HepG2 cells in the G1 phase of the cell cycle by downregulating C-Myc gene expression. Additionally, PD-L1 siRNA was demonstrated to inhibit cell migration in HepG2 cells by downregulating MMP-9 gene expression, though this effect was not statistically significant
Conclusions
Our results suggested that siRNA-mediated PD-L1 silencing could significantly reduce HCC cell viability and proliferation while having no significant impact on HCC cell migration, underlining the need for more research into combinational therapies to optimize its therapeutic potential. |