Abstract
Hepatocellular carcinoma is one of the most common malignant tumors in the world. It has been reported that fibronection type III domain containing family plays an important role in the formation and development of a variety of tumors, but the role of FNDC4 is still unclear. In our study, we found that FNDC4 was highly expressed in normal liver tissues but abnormally expressed at low levels in liver cancer tissues. Enhanced apoptosis and decreased proliferation were shown in the FNDC4 overexpression model in HepG2 cells. In addition, FNDC4 was negatively correlated with AFP, a tumor marker of HCC, and other cancer-related genes such as AHSA1, GDF1, GPC3 and MDK. In addition, we found that FNDC4 was associated with the abundance of several tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes and the expression of chemokines and immunostimulators, and FNDC4 was enriched in response to transforming growth factor β. These results indicated that FNDC4 plays a key role in hepatocellular carcinoma progression and might be a promising biomarker for cancer diagnosis.