Eva‐1 homolog A promotes papillary thyroid cancer progression and epithelial‐mesenchymal transition via the Hippo signalling pathway

Recently, the incidence of thyroid cancer is increasing worldwide. Papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) is the most common histological type of thyroid cancer. Whole‐transcriptome sequence analysis was performed to further understand the primary molecular mechanisms of the occurrence and progression of PTC. Results showed that Eva‐1 homolog A (EVA1A) may be a potential gene for the PTC‐associated gene in thyroid cancer. In this work, the role of EVA1A expression in thyroid cancer was investigated. Real‐time PCR was performed to detect the expression level of EVA1A in 43 pairs of PTC and four thyroid cancer cell lines. The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database was used to evaluate the relationship between the expression level of EVA1A and the pathological feature of PTC. The logistic regression analysis of the TCGA data set indicated that the expression of EVA1A was an independent risk factor for tumour, nde and metastasis (TNM) in PTC. This study shows the down‐regulation of EVA1A inhibited the colony formation, proliferation, migration and invasion of PTC cell lines. In the protein level, knockdown of EVA1A can regulate the expression of N‐cadherin, vimentin, Bcl‐xL, Bax, YAP and TAZ. This study indicated that EVA1A was an oncogene associated with PTC.