Genes expression profiling of peripheral blood cells of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. Cell Biol Int. 2012;36:803-809. [PMID: 22582734 DOI: 10.1042/cbi20100920]

Decoding the roles of heat shock proteins in liver cancer

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common gastrointestinal malignancies, characterized by insidious onset and high propensity for metastasis and recurrence. Apart from surgical resection, there are no effective curative methods for HCC in recent years, due to resistance to radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Heat shock proteins (HSP) play a crucial role in maintaining cellular homeostasis and normal organism development as molecular chaperones for intracellular proteins. Both basic research and clinical data have shown that HSPs are crucial participants in the HCC microenvironment, as well as the occurrence, development, metastasis, and resistance to radiotherapy and chemotherapy in various malignancies, particularly liver cancer. This review aims to discuss the molecular mechanisms and potential clinical value of HSPs in HCC, which may provide new insights for HSP-based therapeutic interventions for HCC.

RPS24 Is Associated with a Poor Prognosis and Immune Infiltration in Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common type of primary liver malignancy, with increased mortality and morbidity. Accumulating evidence suggested that 40S ribosomal protein S24 (RPS24) is related to malignant outcomes and progression. However, the role of RPS24 remains unclear in HCC. The mRNA and protein expression pattern of RPS24 in HCC was explored and confirmed based on the bioinformatics analysis and histological examination. The correlation between RPS24 expression and clinicopathological features, diagnostic value, prognosis, methylation status, and survival were evaluated. Then, we divided the HCC cohort into two groups based on the expression of RPS24, and performed the functional enrichment and immune cells infiltration analysis of RPS24. Furthermore, in vivo and in vitro experiments were performed to investigate the effect of RPS24 on HCC cells. RPS24 was observed to be elevated in HCC samples. RPS24 overexpression or RPS24 promoter methylation contributed to an unfavorable prognosis for HCC patients. The genes in the high RPS24 expression group were mainly enriched in DNA replication, cell cycle E2F targets, and the G2M checkpoint pathway. Moreover, the expression level of RPS24 was significantly related to immune infiltration and immunotherapy response. Our experiments also demonstrated that RPS24 knockdown suppressed the growth of HCC cells and tumor proliferation of the xenograft model. Therefore, RPS24 can be a potential adverse biomarker of HCC prognosis acting through facilitating cell proliferation and the formation of an immunosuppressive microenvironment in HCC. Targeting RPS24 may offer a promising therapeutic option for HCC management.

Chemokines in hepatocellular carcinoma: a meta-analysis

Accumulating evidence suggests that chemokines may play an important role in the formation and mediating of the immune microenvironment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The purpose of this meta-analysis was to explore the differences in blood or tissues chemokines concentrations between HCC patients and controls. Online databases, namely PubMed, Web of Science, Embase and Cochrane Library, were systematically searched for relevant articles published on or before 15 January 2020. Standardized mean differences (SMDs) with corresponding 95% confidence intervals of the chemokines concentrations were calculated as group differences between the HCC patients and the controls. Sixty-five studies met the inclusion criteria for the meta-analysis. Altogether they consisted of 26 different chemokines compared between 5828 HCC patients and 4909 controls; and 12 different chemokines receptors compared between 2053 patients and 2285 controls. The results of meta-analysis indicated that concentrations of CCL20, CXCL8 and CXCR4 in the HCC patients were significantly higher than those in the controls (SMD of 6.18, 1.81 and 1.04, respectively). Therefore, higher concentration levels of CCL20, CXCL8 and CXCR4 may indicate the occurrence of HCC Future research should explore the putative mechanisms underlying this linkage. Meanwhile, attempts can be made to replicate the existing findings in prospective cohort populations and explore the cause-and-effect relationships pertaining to this linkage in order to develop new diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for HCC.

An eight cytokine signature identified from peripheral blood serves as a fingerprint for hepatocellular cancer diagnosis

BACKGROUND

Hepatocellular carcinoma is an aggressive disease in Asia and Africa with poor prognosis partially due to lack of disease-specific biomarkers.

OBJECTIVES

The aim of this study was to assess the concentrations of different cytokines and chemokines in peripheral blood of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma and identify the potential biomarkers that would help in clinical assessment.

METHODS

Profiling of 14 cytokines, chemokines and growth factors was performed in peripheral blood of 78 patients and 78 healthy controls using Bio-Plex Human 15-plex assay kit.

RESULTS

The results showed that patients had significantly higher levels of IL-1β (p=0.034), IL-6 (p=2.13e-06), IL-10 (p=0.013), IL-17A (p=0.017), IL-22 (p=0.00276), IL-25 (p=0.0005), but lower levels of IL-4 (p=0.00341) and IL-33 (p=0.00982) in peripheral blood.

CONCLUSION

We identified a unique eight-peripheral blood cytokines signature for hepatocellular carcinoma detection. This work will serve as the basis for further studies about the clinical value of peripheral blood cytokines in forecasting prognosis.

Identifying and analyzing different cancer subtypes using RNA-seq data of blood platelets

Detection and diagnosis of cancer are especially important for early prevention and effective treatments. Traditional methods of cancer detection are usually time-consuming and expensive. Liquid biopsy, a newly proposed noninvasive detection approach, can promote the accuracy and decrease the cost of detection according to a personalized expression profile. However, few studies have been performed to analyze this type of data, which can promote more effective methods for detection of different cancer subtypes. In this study, we applied some reliable machine learning algorithms to analyze data retrieved from patients who had one of six cancer subtypes (breast cancer, colorectal cancer, glioblastoma, hepatobiliary cancer, lung cancer and pancreatic cancer) as well as healthy persons. Quantitative gene expression profiles were used to encode each sample. Then, they were analyzed by the maximum relevance minimum redundancy method. Two feature lists were obtained in which genes were ranked rigorously. The incremental feature selection method was applied to the mRMR feature list to extract the optimal feature subset, which can be used in the support vector machine algorithm to determine the best performance for the detection of cancer subtypes and healthy controls. The ten-fold cross-validation for the constructed optimal classification model yielded an overall accuracy of 0.751. On the other hand, we extracted the top eighteen features (genes), including TTN, RHOH, RPS20, TRBC2, in another feature list, the MaxRel feature list, and performed a detailed analysis of them. The results indicated that these genes could be important biomarkers for discriminating different cancer subtypes and healthy controls.

Gene Expression Profiling of Peripheral Blood From Kidney Transplant Recipients for the Early Detection of Digestive System Cancer

BACKGROUND

Kidney transplant recipients are at increased risk of developing cancer in comparison with the general population. To effectively manage post-transplantation malignancies, it is essential to proactively monitor patients. A long-term intensive screening program was associated with a reduced incidence of cancer after transplantation. This study evaluated the usefulness of the gene expression profiling of peripheral blood samples obtained from kidney transplant patients and adopted a screening test for detecting cancer of the digestive system (gastric, colon, pancreas, and biliary tract).

STUDY DESIGN AND METHOD

Nineteen patients were included in this study and a total of 53 gene expression screening tests were performed. The gene expression profiles of blood-delivered total RNA and whole genome human gene expression profiles were obtained. We investigated the expression levels of 2665 genes associated with digestive cancers and counted the number of genes in which expression was altered. A hierarchical clustering analysis was also performed. The final prediction of the cancer possibility was determined according to an algorithm.

RESULTS

The number of genes in which expression was altered was significantly increased in the kidney transplant recipients in comparison with the general population (1091 ± 63 vs 823 ± 94; P = .0024). The number of genes with altered expression decreased after the induction of mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibitor (1484 ± 227 vs 883 ± 154; P = .0439). No cases of possible digestive cancer were detected in this study period.

CONCLUSION

The gene expression profiling of peripheral blood samples may be a useful and noninvasive diagnostic tool that allows for the early detection of cancer of the digestive system.

Human Ribosomal Proteins RPeL27, RPeL43, and RPeL41 Are Upregulated in Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma Cell Lines

Apart from their canonical role in ribosome biogenesis, there is increasing evidence of ribosomal protein genes' involvement in various cancers. A previous study by us revealed significant differential expression of three ribosomal protein genes (RPeL27, RPeL41, and RPeL43) between cell lines derived from tumor and normal nasopharyngeal epithelium. However, the results therein were based on a semiquantitative assay, thus preliminary in nature. Herein, we provide findings of a deeper analysis of these three genes in the context to nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) tumorigenesis. Their expression patterns were analyzed in a more quantitative manner at transcript level. Their protein expression levels were also investigated. We showed results that are contrary to previous report. Rather than downregulation, these genes were significantly overexpressed in NPC cell lines compared to normal control at both transcript and protein levels. Nevertheless, their association with NPC has been established. Immunoprecipitation pulldown assays indicate the plausible interaction of either RPeL27 or RPeL43 with POTEE/TUBA1A and ACTB/ACTBL2 complexes. In addition, RPeL43 is shown to bind with MRAS and EIF2S1 proteins in a NPC cell line (HK1). Our findings support RPeL27, RPeL41, and RPeL43 as potential markers of NPC and provide insights into the interaction targets of RPeL27 and RPeL43 proteins.

A circulating non-coding RNA panel as an early detection predictor of non-small cell lung cancer

AIMS

Early non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) diagnosis is generally poor due to the lack of convenient and noninvasive tools. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) and the long non-coding RNA metastasis-associated lung adenocarcinoma transcript 1 (MALAT1) are non-coding RNAs, that have attracted increased attention for their use as NSCLC tumor diagnostic markers.

MAIN METHODS

We constructed a serum miRNA and MALAT1 non-coding RNA panel and tested its diagnostic performance as an NSCLC biomarker. We tested the expression of 11 candidate miRNAs and MALAT1 in a training set (36 NSCLCs vs. 36 controls) by quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reactions. The serum non-coding RNA panel's diagnostic efficiency was tested and validated in a second validation sample set (120 NSCLCs and 71 controls) by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analyses.

KEY FINDINGS

In the training set, the expression of the four non-coding RNAs (miR-1254, miR-485-5p, miR-574-5p, and MALAT1) was obviously different between the NSCLC patients and healthy controls. Risk score analysis revealed that the four non-coding RNA panel can distinguish NSCLC patient samples from controls. The ROC curve results revealed areas under the curves (AUCs) of 0.861 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.771-0.952) and 0.844 (95% CI0.778-0.910) for the training set and validation set, respectively.

SIGNIFICANCE

The four non-coding RNA risk scores were also associated with NSCLC progression, and its diagnostic efficiency was relatively high for stages I/II/III. In conclusion, these data indicate that the four non-coding RNA panel can serve as a convenient tool for early NSCLC diagnosis.

Chemokines and their receptors play important roles in the development of hepatocellular carcinoma

The chemokine system consists of four different subclasses with over 50 chemokines and 19 receptors. Their functions in the immune system have been well elucidated and research during the last decades unveils their new roles in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The chemokines and their receptors in the microenvironment influence the development of HCC by several aspects including: inflammation, effects on immune cells, angiogenesis, and direct effects on HCC cells. Regarding these aspects, pre-clinical research by targeting the chemokine system has yielded promising data, and these findings bring us new clues in the chemokine-based therapies for HCC.

Evaluation of long noncoding RNA MALAT1 as a candidate blood-based biomarker for the diagnosis of non-small cell lung cancer

BACKGROUND

The long noncoding RNA MALAT1 (metastasis-associated lung adenocarcinoma transcript 1) is described as a potential biomarker for NSCLC (non-small cell lung cancer). Diagnostic biomarkers need to be detectable in easily accessible body fluids, should be characterized by high specificity, sufficient sensitivity, and robustness against influencing factors. The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of MALAT1 as a blood based biomarker for NSCLC.

RESULTS

MALAT1 was shown to be detectable in the cellular fraction of peripheral human blood, showing different expression levels between cancer patients and cancer-free controls. For the discrimination of NSCLC patients from cancer-free controls a sensitivity of 56% was calculated conditional on a high specificity of 96%. No impact of tumor stage, age, gender, and smoking status on MALAT1 levels could be observed, but results based on small numbers.

CONCLUSIONS

The results of this study indicate that MALAT1 complies with key characteristics of diagnostic biomarkers, i.e., minimal invasiveness, high specificity, and robustness. Due to its relatively low sensitivity MALAT1 might not be feasible as a single biomarker for the diagnosis of NSCLC in the cellular fraction of blood. Alternatively, MALAT1 might be applicable as a complementary biomarker within a panel in order to improve the entire diagnostic performance.