Bridging molecular basis, prognosis, and treatment of pediatric liver tumors

Abstract

A deeper understanding of the genetic and molecular basis of hepatoblastoma (HB) has fueled the hope to help in identifying genes and signaling pathways that are amenable to therapeutic intervention. However, it has become clear that HB is a genetically very simple cancer and that rather alterations of the transcriptome or epigenome will facilitate a more stratified and rationalized approach to current therapeutics. In this review, we discuss recent findings on genomic, transcriptomic, and epigenomic data and their potential to serve as biomarkers and predictors of patient's outcome. We also describe the state of the art in HB experimental biology, the in vitro and in vivo HB models that are currently available, and their use to improve our understanding of this disease and identify new treatment options.