Research Progress of Pseudogenes in Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Pseudogenes were initially thought to have no function and were called by aliases, such as "junk genes." With the emergence of large-scale genomics projects and more and more experimental studies, pseudogenes have been shown to play an important role in the occurrence and development of solid tumors, especially playing an important regulatory role in the occurrence and develepment of liver cancer, such as regulating the proliferation, apoptosis, invasion, metastasis, and immunity of liver cancer cells. Recent studies showed that pseudogenes can act as regulators of oncogenes and tumor suppressors in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and can thus serve as prognostic markers and even therapeutic targets for this cancer type. In this review, we systematically summarize the mechanisms and functions of different pseudogenes in HCC and present their future prospects as therapeutic targets.