S7). However, SND1 inhibition (either by pdTp or by siRNA) did not affect increased Matrigel invasion activity conferred by AEG-1 (data not shown), indicating that SND1 primarily plays a role in regulating cell growth and proliferation. The observation that inhibition of SND1 can significantly inhibit cell growth and viability prompted us to probe deeper into SND1 involvement in HCC. At first we examined the SND1 expression

pattern by immunohistochemistry in tissue microarrays containing 86 primary HCC, 23 metastatic HCC, and 9 normal adjacent liver samples. SND1 expression was detected predominantly selleckchem in the cytoplasm (Fig. 6C). None of the normal liver and HCC samples stained negative for SND1 (Fig. 6C, Table 1). However, compared to normal liver there was a significant increase in SND1 expression in 81 out of 109 HCC patients (≈74%). SND1 expression gradually increased with the stages of the disease based on the Barcelona Liver Clinic

Cancer (BCLC) staging system that showed significant statistical correlation (Table 1). We next checked the consequence of stable overexpression of SND1 Ivacaftor mw in Hep3B and stable knockdown of SND1 in QGY-7703 human HCCs in the contexts of cell growth and tumorigenicity. Compared to the control neomycin-resistant cells (Hep3B-Con), Hep3B-SND1-17 clones had significant augmentation in cell growth and proliferation as observed by standard MTT and colony-forming assays (Fig. 7A,B, respectively). On the contrary, the QGY-SND1si-12 clone showed significantly slower cell growth and proliferation compared to QGY-Consi clone stably expressing control scrambled siRNA (Fig. 7A,B). In the in vivo nude mice xenograft assay,

the Hep3B-SND1-17 clone formed significantly larger subcutaneous tumors compared to the Hep3B-Con clone (Fig. 7C-E). As a corollary, the QGY-Consi clone formed significantly larger tumor compared to the QGY-SND1si-12 clone (Fig. 7C-E). Similar findings were observed in additional SND1-overexpressing clones of Hep3B cells and SND1-knockdown clones of QGY-7703 cells (Supporting Information Fig. S8). Nuclear SND1 functions as a transcriptional coactivator and helps in pre-mRNA splicing and AEG-1 also modulates transcription.6, Glycogen branching enzyme 7, 14, 19 However, we did not detect colocalization of AEG-1 and SND1 in the nucleus and we documented that AEG-1 interacts with SND1 in the cytoplasm, facilitating RISC activity. Cells lacking fragile X mental retardation protein, another component of RISC, have normal RISC activity,16 further supporting the contribution of AEG-1 in maintaining optimum RISC function. More important, we demonstrate that both AEG-1 and SND1 are overexpressed in HCC compared to normal liver, and human HCC cells exhibit higher RISC activity compared to normal immortal hepatocytes.