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Abstract
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common form of primary liver cancer and the fifth most common cancer worldwide. HCC is recognized as the fourth most common cause of cancer related deaths worldwide due to the lack of effective early diagnostic tools, which often leads to individuals going undiagnosed until the cancer has reached late stage development. The current FDA approved treatments for late stage HCC provide a minimal increase in patient survival and lack tumor specificity, resulting in toxic systemic side effects. Gene therapy techniques, such as chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T Cells, viral vectors, and nanoparticles, are being explored as novel treatment options in various genetic diseases. Pre-clinical studies using gene therapy to treat in vitro and in vivo models of HCC have demonstrated potential efficacy for use in human patients. This review highlights genetic targets, techniques, and current clinical trials in HCC utilizing gene therapy.
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Reghupaty SC, Sarkar D. Current Status of Gene Therapy in Hepatocellular Carcinoma. Cancers (Basel) 2019; 11:cancers11091265. [PMID: 31466358 PMCID: PMC6770843 DOI: 10.3390/cancers11091265] [Citation(s) in RCA: 37] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/22/2019] [Revised: 08/21/2019] [Accepted: 08/27/2019] [Indexed: 12/17/2022] Open
Abstract
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the fifth most common cancer and the second leading cause of cancer related deaths world-wide. Liver transplantation, surgical resection, trans-arterial chemoembolization, and radio frequency ablation are effective strategies to treat early stage HCC. Unfortunately, HCC is usually diagnosed at an advanced stage and there are not many treatment options for late stage HCC. First-line therapy for late stage HCC includes sorafenib and lenvatinib. However, these treatments provide only an approximate three month increase in survival. Besides, they cannot specifically target cancer cells that lead to a wide array of side effects. Patients on these drugs develop resistance within a few months and have to rely on second-line therapy that includes regorafenib, pembrolizumab, nivolumab, and cabometyx. These disadvantages make gene therapy approach to treat HCC an attractive option. The two important questions that researchers have been trying to answer in the last 2-3 decades are what genes should be targeted and what delivery systems should be used. The objective of this review is to analyze the changing landscape of HCC gene therapy, with a focus on these two questions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Saranya Chidambaranathan Reghupaty
- Department of Human and Molecular Genetics, Massey Cancer Center, VCU Institute of Molecular Medicine (VIMM), Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23298, USA
| | - Devanand Sarkar
- Department of Human and Molecular Genetics, Massey Cancer Center, VCU Institute of Molecular Medicine (VIMM), Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23298, USA.
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Li L, Zheng YL, Jiang C, Fang S, Zeng TT, Zhu YH, Li Y, Xie D, Guan XY. HN1L-mediated transcriptional axis AP-2γ/METTL13/TCF3-ZEB1 drives tumor growth and metastasis in hepatocellular carcinoma. Cell Death Differ 2019; 26:2268-2283. [PMID: 30778199 DOI: 10.1038/s41418-019-0301-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 43] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/14/2018] [Accepted: 01/25/2019] [Indexed: 12/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most aggressive malignancies and lacks targeted therapies. Here, we reported a novel potential therapeutic target hematological and neurological expressed 1 like (HN1L) in HCC. First, HCC tissue microarray analysis showed that HN1L was frequently up-regulated in cancer tissues than that in normal liver tissues, which significantly associated with tumor size, local invasion, distant metastases, and poor prognosis for HCC patients. Functional studies demonstrated that ectopic expression of HN1L could increase cell growth, foci formation in monolayer culture, colony formation in soft agar and tumorigenesis in nude mice. In addition, HN1L could also promote HCC metastasis by inducing epithelial-mesenchymal transition. Inversely, silencing HN1L expression with shRNA could effectively attenuate its oncogenic function. We further showed that HN1L transcriptionally up-regulated methyltransferase like 13 (METTL13) gene in an AP-2γ dependent manner, which promoted cell proliferation and metastasis by up-regulating TCF3 and ZEB1. Importantly, administration of lentivirus-mediated shRNA interfering HN1L expression could inhibit tumorigenesis and metastasis in mice. Collectively, HN1L-mediated transcriptional axis AP-2γ/METTL13/TCF3-ZEB1 promotes HCC growth and metastasis representing a promising therapeutic target in HCC treatment.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lei Li
- State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China and Collaborative Innovation Center for Cancer Medicine, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, 510060, Guangzhou, China
| | - Yin-Li Zheng
- State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China and Collaborative Innovation Center for Cancer Medicine, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, 510060, Guangzhou, China
| | - Chen Jiang
- Department of Pathology, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, 510060, Guangzhou, China
| | - Shuo Fang
- Department of Clinical Oncology, The University of Hong Kong, 852, Hong Kong, China
| | - Ting-Ting Zeng
- State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China and Collaborative Innovation Center for Cancer Medicine, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, 510060, Guangzhou, China
| | - Ying-Hui Zhu
- State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China and Collaborative Innovation Center for Cancer Medicine, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, 510060, Guangzhou, China
| | - Yan Li
- State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China and Collaborative Innovation Center for Cancer Medicine, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, 510060, Guangzhou, China
| | - Dan Xie
- State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China and Collaborative Innovation Center for Cancer Medicine, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, 510060, Guangzhou, China
| | - Xin-Yuan Guan
- State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China and Collaborative Innovation Center for Cancer Medicine, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, 510060, Guangzhou, China. .,Department of Clinical Oncology, The University of Hong Kong, 852, Hong Kong, China.
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