Biomedical Research ; trends ; Humans ; Liver Neoplasms

Antiviral Agents ; therapeutic use ; Carcinoma, Hepatocellular ; drug therapy ; virology ; Hepacivirus ; Hepatitis B virus ; Humans ; Liver Neoplasms ; drug therapy ; virology

Collective migration is the essential movement style in embryonic development.Recent stu-dies have found that collective migration is one of the main movement styles in invasion and metastasis of tumor cells.Tumor cells can invade into the stroma and microvascular in group,and the collective migration shows the unique characters when compared to the single cell movement.The potential mechanisms are closely correlated to the cell-cell connection and interaction between tumor cells and microenvironment.With the gradual improve-ment of the observation models,the mechanisms about the physical or chemical guidance,the related signaling pathways,and the epigenetic regulation in collective migration will be elucidated.

The 5'-flanking region of the human ?-fetoprotein(AFP) gene contains transcriptional regulatory sequences(TRSs) which up-regulate AFP gene expression with cell-specific enhancer activity in hepatoma cells. A couple of primers(Primerl: 5'-TGCAAGCTTATGATTCCCAAATATC-3'; Primer 2: 5'-GTCGAATTCGTGGCCTGGA TAAAGCTGAGT-3') were designed for synthesis and purification according to the known sequences of 5'-flanking region. AFPTRSs of 416 base pairs were amplified from human chromosome DNA by PCR, The identification of the AFPTRSs was confirmed to be consistent with reported sequences. The AFPTRSs can be applied to regulating the specific expression of cytokines in hepatoma cells.

In this study, the RT-PCR method was employed to detect the expression of AFP in mRNA level in tissue samples form 52 patients suffered from hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) . The results revealed that the positive rate of AFPmRNA was 76.9% in the HCC tumor tissues and 69.4% in the paratumortissues from the HCC patients with severe cirrhosis . Meanwhile, in HCC patients without cirrhosis, the positive rate reached 50% in tumor tissues, but no AFPmRNA expression was found in related paratumor tissues. The study suggested that the AFP protein was specially expressed by hepatoma cells and mutating hepatocytes. The relationships between AFPmRNA and tumoor size, capsule status and tumor metastasis were also demonstrated.

Objective To study severe or rare complications following radiofrequency ablation (RFA) for liver cancer. Methods Clinical records of severe or rare complications following RFA in 272 cases of liver cancer from January 2002 to December 2004 were retrospectively studied. Results A total of 301 RFA procedures were performed in the 272 cases. The incidence of severe or rare complications was 3.32% (10/301), and the death rate was 0.66% (2/301). Complications included 1 case of intraperitoneal hemorrhage, 2 cases of infection (1 case of peritonitis with sepsis and 1 case of liver Abscess superimposed upon bilioma), 3 cases of upper gastrointestinal bleeding (including 1 case of hemobilia), 1 case of hepatic arteriovenous fistula, 1 case of hemo-pneumothorax, 1 case of esophagopleural fistula and 1 case of needle-tract implantation of tumor. Conclusions In order of frequency,severe complications following RFA are upper gastrointestinal bleeding,infection and intraperitoneal hemorrhage.

Carcinoma, Hepatocellular ; genetics ; immunology ; therapy ; Cytokines ; genetics ; therapeutic use ; Dendritic Cells ; immunology ; Genetic Therapy ; methods ; Humans ; Immunotherapy, Adoptive ; methods ; Liver Neoplasms ; genetics ; immunology ; therapy

Objective:The protein of missing in metastasis (MIM), a novel discovered actin-binding scaffold protein, is involved in actin cytoskeleton rearrangements, signal transduction and transcriptional activation, and has close association with tumor growth, invasion, and metastasis. Recently, much focus has been placed on the role of MIM performed in tumor progression. In recent years, more and more attention is focused on its action mechanism in various kinds of tumors, which has a wide foreground of investigation. In this paper, we make a comprehensive review of the association of MIM with cancer development, in order to provide the theoretical basis and new strategies for application of MIM proteins in cancer diagnosis and treatment.

Objective　To explore the expression and significance of p21WAF1 and p53 in HCC. Methods　Immunohistochemical method (IHC) was used to localize and semi-quantitate the proteins of p21WAF1 and p53 and to observe the relationship between the expression of p21WAF1 and the different histopathologic characters in 38 patients of HCC and their peri-cancer tissue as well as 5 normal liver tissue. Results　Of all 38 cases, both p21WAF1 and p53 expression were significantly higher in tumor than that in corresponding non-tumors liver tissue; 14 (36.8 %) of 38 cases showed p21WAF1 positive staining, 28 cases (73.7 %) were p53 positive, p21WAF1＋/p53＋ or p21WAF1-/p53－ were observed in 18, while 20 cases showed p53＋/p21WAF1－ or p53－/p21WAF1＋. p21WAF1＋ was seen in 1 of 38 (2.6 %) corresponding non-cancerous tissue and 2 of 5 normal liver tissue. p53 protein was not detected neither in the non-tumorous tissue nor in normal liver. No significant association was found between the expressions of p21WAF1 and p53(P＞0.05) in HCC. Their was no significant correlation between p21WAF1 or p53 expression and the different histopathologic characters of tumor (differentiating grades, intrahepatic metastasis and/or cancerous thrombi within portal veins). Conclusion　Both p21WAF1 and p53 proteins are over expressed in HCC than that in corresponding non-tumorous liver tissue, but there is no relationship between them. Both p53-independent and p53-dependent mechanism may play a role in regulating p21WAF1 expression in HCC. p21WAF1 immunostaining cannot be used to assess the status of p53 in any given cell or tissue.