BPG is committed to discovery and dissemination of knowledge
Basic Study
Copyright: ©Author(s) 2026. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license. No commercial re-use. See permissions. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc.
World J Gastroenterol. May 21, 2026; 32(19): 115332
Published online May 21, 2026. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v32.i19.115332
PRMT5 imposed a dual repression on DDIT3 transcription to promote the malignancy of hepatocellular carcinoma
Hao Jiang, Jin-Hua Yan, Wen-Jing Tang, Bin Shen, Shuai Mo, Yang Wang, De-Hua Hu, Zhi-Xiong Dong, Shu-Bing Zhang
Hao Jiang, Bin Shen, Shuai Mo, De-Hua Hu, Department of Biomedical Informatics, School of Life Sciences, Central South University, Changsha 410013, Hunan Province, China
Jin-Hua Yan, Wen-Jing Tang, Yang Wang, Shu-Bing Zhang, Department of Cell Biology, School of Life Sciences, Central South University, Changsha 410013, Hunan Province, China
Zhi-Xiong Dong, Medicine and Life Sciences, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou 325053, Zhejiang Province, China
Co-first authors: Hao Jiang and Jin-Hua Yan.
Co-corresponding authors: Zhi-Xiong Dong and Shu-Bing Zhang.
Author contributions: Jiang H, Dong ZX and Zhang SB designed the research study; Dong ZX, Zhang SB helped to supervised the study; Jiang H, Yan JH and Tang WJ performed most experiments, analyzed the data, wrote the manuscript and edited the paper; Wang Y, Shen B and Mo S contributed to new reagents and analytic tools; Hu DH helped to perform the experiments and analyzed the data; Jiang H and Zhang SB helped to edit the paper; all authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 82573818; the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province of China, No. 2025JJ50542; and Key Laboratory of School of Laboratory Medicine and Life Sciences, Wenzhou Medical University, No. JS2023005.
Institutional review board statement: The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of School of Life Sciences, Central South University (approval No. 2021-1-46).
Institutional animal care and use committee statement: All animal experiments were approved by the Ethics Committee of School of Life Sciences, Central South University (approval No. 2021-2-56).
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
ARRIVE guidelines statement: The authors have read the ARRIVE guidelines, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the ARRIVE guidelines.
Data sharing statement: All the data generated or analyzed in this study are included in this published article. The data are available upon request from the corresponding author.
Corresponding author: Shu-Bing Zhang, MD, Professor, Department of Cell Biology, School of Life Sciences, Central South University, No. 172 Tongzipo, Yuelu District, Changsha 410013, Hunan Province, China. shubingzhang@csu.edu.cn
Received: October 17, 2025
Revised: December 28, 2025
Accepted: February 14, 2026
Published online: May 21, 2026
Processing time: 214 Days and 19.4 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: High PRMT5 expression was correlated with a worse prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and inhibition of PRMT5 expression significantly decreased the viability of HCC cells by inducing apoptosis. Mechanistically, PRMT5 dually suppressed the promoter activity of the apoptosis-inducing factor DDIT3 by increasing H4R3me2 modification and recruiting STAT3 to its promoter. The PRMT5 inhibitor HLCL-61 exerted excellent inhibitory efficacy on HCC cells and tissue derived tumors. In general, our study demonstrated that PRMT5 served as an adaptor for STAT3, displaying a dual inhibitory role on DDIT3 transcription to promote apoptosis resistance, and provided that its inhibitor HLCL-61 was an alternative therapeutic approach of HCC.

Write to the Help Desk