Scinderin suppresses cell proliferation and predicts the poor prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains an intractable disease despite numerous advancements made in the available treatments over recent decades. Therefore, investigation of the underlying pathogenesis of HCC is urgently required. Our previous microarray result showed that SCIN was generally downregulated in 23 paired tumor/normal tissues. Reverse transcription-quantitative PCR, western blotting and immunohistochemistry were performed in the present study in order to detect the expression of scinderin (SCIN). Lentivirus-mediated gene delivery was used in order to produce SCIN-manipulated cell lines. MTT and crystal violet assays were performed in order to investigate cell growth, and fluorescence-activated cell sorting analysis was used in order to determine cell cycle distribution. SCIN was downregulated in HCC samples, and low SCIN expression predicted the poor prognosis of patients with HCC. Notably, SCIN may have the potential to serve as an independent risk factor for overall survival (3-year overall survival rate of 28.6 and 10.3% in high SCIN expression and low SCIN expression groups, respectively) and disease-free survival (3-year recurrence rate of 71.4 and 84.6% in high SCIN expression and low SCIN expression groups, respectively) in HCC. SCIN inhibited HCC cell proliferation both in vitro and in subcutaneous tumor formation assay. Furthermore, SCIN decreased the levels of phosphorylated STAT3, thereby downregulating cyclin A1 levels in HCC cells. The results of the present study demonstrate the tumor suppressive role of SCIN in HCC, providing a candidate strategy to treat this disease.