Relationship between epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition and the inflammatory microenvironment of hepatocellular carcinoma

Abstract

Epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a complex process involving multiple genes, steps and stages. It refers to the disruption of tight intercellular junctions among epithelial cells under specific conditions, resulting in loss of the original polarity, order and consistency of the cells. Following EMT, the cells show interstitial cell characteristics with the capacity for adhesion and migration, while apoptosis is inhibited. This process is critically involved in embryogenesis, wound-healing, tumor invasion and metastasis. The tumor microenvironment is composed of infiltrating inflammatory cells, stromal cells and the active medium secreted by interstitial cells. Most patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) have a history of hepatitis virus infection. In such cases, major components of the tumor microenvironment include inflammatory cells, inflammatory factors and virus-encoded protein are major components. Here, we review the relationship between EMT and the inflammatory tumor microenvironment in the context of HCC. We also further elaborate the significant influence of infiltrating inflammatory cells and inflammatory mediators as well as the products expressed by the infecting virus in the tumor microenvironment on the EMT process.

Genome‐wide identification of a competing endogenous RNA network in cholangiocarcinoma

“…In recent studies, increasing evidence demonstrated that lncRNA plays a crucial biological role in the initiation, progression, metastasis, and recurrence of tumor . Moreover, lncRNAs could also serve as the promising biomarkers for prognosis and diagnosis in various tumors . Increasing research has showed that dysregulation of lncRNAs were correlated with the carcinogenesis of CCA, as well as decreasing the survival rate of patients .…”

“…[20][21][22][23] Moreover, lncRNAs could also serve as the promising biomarkers for prognosis and diagnosis in various tumors. [24][25][26][27] Increasing research has showed that | 18999 dysregulation of lncRNAs were correlated with the carcinogenesis of CCA, as well as decreasing the survival rate of patients. 28,29 Therefore, it is necessary to identify potential lncRNAs acting as promising prognostic biomarkers, which could function as a potential therapeutic target for patients with CCA.…”

A pipeline to create predictive functional networks: application to the tumor progression of hepatocellular carcinoma

“…For this work, we implemented Pathrider [9] in order to extract a subgraph from the KEGG generic human signaling network (obtained in the previous section). Given a list of genes and a network, Pathrider will keep only the signaling pathways of the network regulating the list of genes, that is, the upstream paths of the nodes in the network that represent these genes.…”

“…Pathrider will also filter out the biomolecules [8] File hsa-2345-symb-nomulti-split-func-sign.sif at https://github.com/LokmaneChebouba/key-pipe/ tree/master/example. [9] Available at: https://github.com/arnaudporet/pathrider in the graph (genes, proteins or protein complexes) that appear in a list of excluded genes, which in practice refer to genes whose expression is undetectable. This tool is included in the automatic pipeline we propose in this work (see Section 2.1).…”

Astragalus polysaccharide inhibits breast cancer cell migration and invasion by regulating epithelial‑mesenchymal transition via the Wnt/β‑catenin signaling pathway

“…Tumor metastasis displays a number of unique characteristics, including migration and invasion; however, the mechanisms of tumor migration and invasion have not been fully determined. Recently, it was identified that epithelial-mesenchymal transition (eMT), which is the transformation of epithelial cells into mesenchymal cells, can significantly enhance the motility of cancer cells (8).…”