Clinical and Translational Research
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2020. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Jul 26, 2020; 8(14): 2917-2929
Published online Jul 26, 2020. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v8.i14.2917
Identification of APEX2 as an oncogene in liver cancer
Ru Zheng, Heng-Liang Zhu, Bing-Ren Hu, Xiao-Jiao Ruan, Hua-Jie Cai
Ru Zheng, Bing-Ren Hu, Xiao-Jiao Ruan, Hua-Jie Cai, Department of General Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou 325000, Zhejiang Province, China
Heng-Liang Zhu, Department of General Surgery, Shenzhen University General Hospital, Shenzhen 518107, Guangdong Province, China
Author contributions: Cai HJ conceived and designed the study; Zheng R conducted the experiments and data analysis; Zhu HL performed the statistical analysis; Hu BR and Ruan XJ wrote the manuscript; all authors reviewed and approved the final manuscript.
Supported by Wenzhou Science and Technology Bureau, No. Y20180147.
Institutional review board statement: This study was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of the First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University.
Informed consent statement: Patients were not required to give informed consent to this study because the analysis used anonymous clinical data and the confidentiality of the patients was preserved.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors have no conflict of interests to declare.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Hua-Jie Cai, MD, Associate Chief Physician, Department of General Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Nanbaixiang Street, Ouhai District, Wenzhou 325000, Zhejiang Province, China. huajie.cai@outlook.com
Received: April 17, 2020
Peer-review started: April 17, 2020
First decision: May 26, 2020
Revised: May 27, 2020
Accepted: June 12, 2020
Article in press: June 12, 2020
Published online: July 26, 2020
Processing time: 98 Days and 9.7 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: In this study, we identified that APEX2 is highly expressed in liver hepatocellular carcinoma (LIHC), and overexpression of APEX2 could act as a poor prognostic factor. The GO Ontology-based GSEA analysis suggested that APEX2 is an important regulator in the kinetochore and spindle microtubule. Besides, APEX2 is closely associated with the biological processes of chromosome segregation and DNA replication. The molecular mechanism analysis indicated that APEX2 is positively associated with cell cycle and MYC pathways. Knockdown of APEX2 can impede the viability of liver cancer cells, and inhibit CCNB1 and MYC pathways, suggesting that APEX2 is an oncogene in LIHC.