Clinical patterns of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD): a multicenter prospective study

STAMBPL1, transcriptionally regulated by SREBP1, promotes malignant behaviors of hepatocellular carcinoma cells via Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the leading causes of cancer-related death worldwide. STAM binding protein-like 1 (STAMBPL1), a key member of the COP9 signalosome subunit 5/serine protease 27/proteasome 26S subunit non-ATPase 7 (JAMM) family, is closely associated with tumor development. In this work, data from GSE101728 and GSE84402 chips were analyzed, and STAMBPL1 was selected as the target factor. This study aimed to reveal the potential function of STAMBPL1 in HCC. Clinical results showed that STAMBPL1 was significantly increased in tumor tissues of HCC patients, and its expression was strongly associated with tumor size and TNM stage. Furthermore, STAMBPL1-overexpressed Hep3B2.1-7 cell line or STAMBPL1-silenced SNU-182 cell line were established using lentivirus carrying cDNA encoding STAMBPL1 mRNA or shRNA targeting STAMBPL1, respectively. STAMBPL1-overexpressed cells exhibited a pronounced enhancement of proliferation in vitro and in vivo. Exogenous expression of STAMBPL1 increased the percentage of cells in the S phase and upregulated the expressions of CyclinD1 and Survivin. As expected, STAMBPL1 knockdown exhibited completely opposite effects, resulting in impaired tumorigenicity in vitro and in vivo. Mechanistically, STAMBPL1 activated Wnt/β-catenin pathway and increased the expression of downstream cancer-promoting genes. Interestingly, we found that STAMBPL1 was transcriptionally regulated by sterol regulatory element-binding protein 1 (SREBP1), a modulator of lipid metabolism, as evidenced by luciferase reporter and chromatin-immunoprecipitation (Ch-IP) assays. Notably, STAMBPL1 overexpression increased lipid accumulation in HCC cells and xenograft tumors. Totally our findings suggest that STAMBPL1 plays a vital role in the tumorigenicity of HCC cells. Modulation of Wnt/β-catenin and lipid metabolism may contribute to its pro-cancer effects. STAMBPL1 may serve as a therapeutic target of HCC.

Is There Really a Difference in Outcomes between Men and Women with Hepatocellular Cancer?

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a male-dominated disease. Currently, gender differences remain incompletely defined. Data from the state tumor registry were used to investigate differences in demographics, comorbidities, treatment patterns, and cancer-specific survival (HSS) among HCC patients according to gender. Additional analyses were performed to evaluate racial differences among women with HCC. 2627 patients with HCC were included; 498 (19%) were women. Women were mostly white (58%) or African American (39%)-only 3.8% were of another or unknown race. Women were older (65.1 vs. 61.3 years), more obese (33.7% vs. 24.2%), and diagnosed at an earlier stage (31.7% vs. 28.4%) than men. Women had a lower incidence of liver associated comorbidities (36.1% vs. 43%), and more often underwent liver-directed surgery (LDS; 27.5% vs. 22%). When controlling for LDS, no survival differences were observed between genders. African American women had similar HSS rates compared to white women (HR 1.14 (0.91,1.41), p = 0.239) despite having different residential and treatment geographical distributions. African American race and age >65 were predictive for worse HSS in men, but not in women. Overall, women with HCC undergo more treatment options-likely because of the earlier stage of the cancer and/or less severe underlying liver disease. However, when controlling for similar stages and treatments, HCC treatment outcomes were similar between men and women. African American race did not appear to influence outcomes among women with HCC as it did in men.

Prognostic significance and oncogene function of cathepsin A in hepatocellular carcinoma

Cathepsin A (CTSA) is a lysosomal protease that regulates galactoside metabolism. The previous study has shown CTSA is abnormally expressed in various types of cancer. However, rarely the previous study has addressed the role of CTSA in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and its prognostic value. To study the clinical value and potential function of CTSA in HCC, datasets from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database and a 136 HCC patient cohort were analyzed. CTSA expression was found to be significantly higher in HCC patients compared with normal liver tissues, which was supported by immunohistochemistry (IHC) validation. Both gene ontology (GO) and The Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analyses demonstrated that CTSA co-expressed genes were involved in ATP hydrolysis coupled proton transport, carbohydrate metabolic process, lysosome organization, oxidative phosphorylation, other glycan degradation, etc. Survival analysis showed a significant reduction both in overall survival (OS) and recurrence-free survival (RFS) of patients with high CTSA expression from both the TCGA HCC cohort and 136 patients with the HCC cohort. Furthermore, CTSA overexpression has diagnostic value in distinguishing between HCC and normal liver tissue [Area under curve (AUC) = 0.864]. Moreover, Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) showed that CTSA expression correlated with the oxidative phosphorylation, proteasome, and lysosome, etc. in HCC tissues. These findings demonstrate that CTSA may as a potential diagnostic and prognostic biomarker in HCC.

Radiomics based on artificial intelligence in liver diseases: where we are?

Radiomics uses computers to extract a large amount of information from different types of images, form various quantifiable features, and select relevant features using artificial-intelligence algorithms to build models, in order to predict the outcomes of clinical problems (such as diagnosis, treatment, prognosis, etc.). The study of liver diseases by radiomics will contribute to early diagnosis and treatment of liver diseases and improve survival and cure rates of liver diseases. This field is currently in the ascendant and may have great development in the future. Therefore, we summarize the progress of current research in this article and then point out the related deficiencies and the direction of future research.