BackgroundHuman hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is an important public health issue in the Asia-Pacific region and is associated with chronic hepatitis, liver fibrosis, cirrhosis and even liver cancer. However, the underlying mechanisms of HBV-associated liver fibrosis remain incompletely understood.ResultsIn the present study, proteomic and transcriptomic approaches as well as biological network analyses were performed to investigate the differentially expressed molecular signature and key regulatory networks that were associated with HBV-mediated liver fibrosis. RNA sequencing and 2DE-MALDI-TOF/TOF were performed on liver tissue samples obtained from HBV-infected C57BL/6 mouse generated via AAV8-HBV virus. The results showed that 322 genes and 173 proteins were differentially expressed, and 28 HBV-specific proteins were identified by comprehensive proteomic and transcriptomic analysis. GO analysis indicated that the differentially expressed proteins were predominantly involved in oxidative stress, which plays a key role in HBV-related liver fibrosis. Importantly, CAT, PRDX1, GSTP1, NXN and BLVRB were shown to be associated with oxidative stress among the differentially expressed proteins. The most striking results were validated by Western blot and RT-qPCR. The RIG-I like receptor signaling pathway was found to be the major signal pathway that changed during HBV-related fibrosis.ConclusionsThis study provides novel insights into HBV-associated liver fibrosis and reveals the significant role of oxidative stress in liver fibrosis. Furthermore, CAT, BLVRB, NXN, PRDX1, and IDH1 may be candidates for detection of liver fibrosis or therapeutic targets for the treatment of liver fibrosis.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12864-017-3984-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The hepatitis B virus (HBV) causes acute and chronic liver infection, which may lead to liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Current treatments including interferons and nucleotide analogs, have limited therapeutic effects, underscoring the need to identify effective therapeutic options to inhibit HBV replication and prevent complications. Previous animal models mimicking chronic HBV infection do not faithfully reflect disease progression in humans. Here, we used our established HBV-persistent mouse line with liver fibrosis to evaluate the efficacy of novel therapies. The combination of two short hairpin RNAs (dual-shRNA) against different coding regions of HBV delivered by a self-complementary AAV vector showed better antiviral effects than single shRNA both in vitro and in HBV-persistent mice. The dual-shRNA also exhibited stronger antifibrotic activity in vivo. Vector carrying shRNA against TGF-β, though did not inhibit HBV replication alone, enhanced the antiviral and antifibrotic activities of single and dual HBV shRNAs. Co-administration of TGF-β shRNA and HBV dual-shRNA decreased HBV DNA, HBV RNA, HBsAg, HBeAg, and liver fibrosis markers in serum and tissues, and improved liver morphology more effectively than single treatments. Our results suggest that the combination of shRNAs against HBV and TGF-β could be developed into a viable treatment for human HBV infection.

Defining and loading of immunogenic and safe cancer antigens remain a major challenge for designing dendritic cell (DC)-based cancer vaccines. In this study, we defined a prototype strategy of using DC-based vaccines pulsed with placenta-derived heat shock protein gp96 to induces anti-tumor T cell responses. Placental gp96 was efficiently taken up by CD11c+ bone marrow-derived DCs (BMDCs) and resulted in moderate BMDC maturation. Splenocytes and cytotoxic T cells (CTLs) generated with mouse BMDCs pulsed with placental gp96 specifically lysed B16 melanoma and LLC lung carcinoma cells. In both transplantable melanoma and lung carcinoma mice models, immunization with placental gp96-stimulated BMDCs led to a significant decrease in tumor growth and mouse mortality with respect to mice treated with liver gp96-pulsed BMDCs or placental gp96 alone. This vaccine induced strong cross-reactive tumor-specific T cell responses. Our results revealed that DCs pulsed with placenta-derived gp96 represent an effective immunotherapy to induce tumor-reactive immune responses, possibly via loading DCs with its associated carcinoembryonic antigens.

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