Hepatocellular Carcinoma: Tumorigenesis and Prediction Markers

Abstract

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common malignancies. Although many advances have been made in the clinical study of HCC, the prognosis remains poor. Despite the discoveries in cancer biology in respect with physiological and pathological factors in relation to prognosis, HCC remains still a fatal disease due to late diagnosis. For improving the outcomes of patients with HCC, it is important to identify the factors predisposing to patient death. In recent years, based on cellular and molecular biology techniques, many tumor markers related to invasion, metastasis, recurrence and survival have been explored. However, routine biomarkers for the prediction of HCC evolution and prognosis are available in small number and less specific. These reviews focus on the recent advances in HCC tumorigenesis, revealing those biomarkers with prognosis significance or can be used for early detection.

Tolemerase Reverse Transcriptase Gene Expression as a Tumor Marker for Hepatocellular Carcinoma

“…This age difference is in agreement with (Elizabeth et al, 2008) who reported an incidence of 64.9% of HCC cases in Egypt between the age of 50 and 69 years which may be explained by that liver cancer are generally attributed to HCV and chronic HCV most probably lead to carcinogenesis after 10-30 years following infection or may be due to late diagnosis in Egypt (Shariff et al, 2011). The higher increase of hTERT mRNA level in HCC patients were in agreement with (Braicu et al, 2009;Roessler et al, 2007;Miura et al, 2010). Although telomerase per se is not carcinogenic, it plays a direct role in oncogenesis by allowing the precancerous cells to proliferate continuously and become immortal, which can be explained by the positive correlation between telomerase activity and tumors of different histological origins and types (Cortez-Gonzalez and Zanetti, 2007).…”

“…For the HCC group, the hTERT-mRNA expression levels were positively correlated with AFP and tumor size but not with site or number of the focal lesion. These findings are in agreement with (Miura et al, 2007;Braicu et al, 2009;Miura et al, 2010).However, Stravitz et al(2008) reported that the enzyme level was significantly associated with tumor size but not AFP level.…”

“…In human cancer the activation of telomerase often correlates with tumor progression. Telomerase is significantly activated in HCC and that in chronic liver diseases such as Liver Cirrhosis (LC) and Chronic Hepatitis (CH) but it is significantly lower than that in HCC because human Telomerase Reverse Transcriptase (hTERT) mRNA is up-regulated in the multistep process of hepatocarcinogenesis (Braicu et al, 2009). So the present study aimed to clarify the significance of human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT mRNA) catalytic subunit as a tumor marker for detection of Hepatocellular Carcinoma (HCC).…”

Expression of CD133, CD44, CK7, and OCT4 in Animal Cancers

“…Recently, the role of cancer stem cells in tumor initiation and progression has been the focus of several studies. Searching for specific cancer stem cell markers is essential for further investigating the initiation, invasiveness, differentiation, metastasis, and prognosis of tumors [5,35].…”

Cholera toxin inhibits human hepatocarcinoma cell proliferation in vitro via suppressing ATX/LPA axis

“…The increasing incidence and poor prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma [3] emphasize a need to develop effective chemoprevention for this disease. In recent years, many biological factors with potential prognostic significance for HCC have been associated with the invasiveness, metastasis, recurrence, and survival of HCC [4] . Autotaxin (ATX), discovered in human melanoma cells, was identified as a gene with enhanced mRNA expression in human hepatitis associated HCC [5] .…”