ISG15 is associated with cervical cancer development

Cervical cancer (CC) is a complex disease. Numerous factors contribute to the tumourigenesis and progression of CC neoplasms. The present study analysed transcriptomic differences and simulated tumour progression to explore the pathogenesis of CC. RNA sequencing was performed to analyse the transcriptomic differences among normal tissue (NC), paracarcinoma tissue (TP), and primary tumour tissue (TT). Pseudo-time analysis was performed to simulate tumour progression. Reverse transcription-quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) and immunohistochemistry (IHC) were used to analyse the expression levels of ISG15 ubiquitin-like modifier (ISG15). Cell proliferation wound healing and Transwell assays were used to examine the effect of ISG15 inhibition and overexpression on HeLa cells. The RT-qPCR and IHC results indicated that ISG15 expression was significantly upregulated in TT. An increasing trend of ISG15 expression from NC to TP to TT was observed, which suggested that elevated ISG15 expression was closely associated with malignant evolution in CC tissues. HeLa cell experiments revealed that ISG15-small interfering RNA inhibited cell proliferation and invasion. The present study demonstrated that ISG15 was upregulated in CC and positively associated with the development of CC. ISG15 may act as an oncogene in the tumourigenesis of CC.