Project description:Massive studies have been applied in exploring the factors driving pathogenesis, progression and metastasis of hepatocellular carcinoma. However these studies were inefficient in disclosing the fundamental mechanism which promotes hepatocellular carcinoma. Zinc and zinc-finger proteins have been important in extensive biological processes for human. Supervised machine learning using bootstrapping algorithm on GEO and TCGA transcriptome data for hepatocellular carcinoma identified zinc-finger like protein ZFPL1 as potential hepatocellular carcinoma driver. Further studies validated ZFPL1 significantly promoted progression and metastasis of hepatocellular carcinoma. We performed RNA-seq on si-ZFPL1 xenograft tissue and identified CLDN3 as potential target gene for ZFPL1. Further experiments confirmed interaction between ZFPL1 and WNT signaling pathway markers. Conclusively, these studies indicated the effect and mechanism of ZFPL1 on promoting progression and metastasis of hepatocellular carcinoma and might gap the bridge between zinc-finger like proteins and hepatocellular carcinoma.
Project description:Accumulating evidence suggests that DEAD-box proteins are essential in RNA metabolism and play pivotal roles in cancer progression. However, the mechanisms underlying how DDX24 drives hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remain largely unknown. In this study, we demonstrated that DDX24 was an oncogene and identified DDX24 promoted HCC development via interacting with NCL.
Project description:Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. β-catenin is widely thought to be a major oncogene in HCC based on the frequency of mutations associated with aberrant Wnt signaling in HCC patients. Challenging this model, our data reveal that β-catenin nuclear accumulation is restricted to the late stage of the disease. Until then, β-catenin is primarily located at the plasma membrane in complex with multiple cadherin family members where it drives tumor cell survival by enhancing the signaling of growth factor receptors such as EGFR. Therefore, our study reveals the evolving nature of β-catenin in HCC to establish it as a compound tumor promoter during the progression of the disease.
Project description:Genomic analysis of human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is potentially confounded by the differentiation state of the hepatic cell-of-origin. Here we integrated genomic analysis of mouse HCC (with defined cell-of-origin) along with normal liver development. We found a major shift in expression of Wnt and RXR-α pathway genes (up and down, respectively) coincident with the transition from hepatoblasts to hepatocytes. A combined Wnt and RXR-α gene signature categorized HCCs into two subtypes (high Wnt, low RXR-α and low Wnt, high RXR-α), which matched cell-of-origin in mouse models and the differentiation state of human HCC. Suppression of RXR-α levels in hepatocytes increased Wnt signaling and enhanced tumorigenicity, whereas ligand activation of RXR-α achieved the opposite. These results corroborate that there are two main HCC subtypes that correspond to the degree of hepatocyte differentation and that RXR-α, in part via Wnt signaling, plays a key functional role in the hepatocyte-like subtype and potentially could serve as a selective therapeutic target.
Project description:Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a common malignancy with high mortality due to a lack of effective therapies. HCC represents a collection of highly heterogeneous tumor types but a general molecular classification of HCC is lacking. Here, we define three molecular subtypes of HCC that are observed across various independent patient cohorts and profiling platforms. Analysis of the expression signatures indicates that a limited number of pathways and processes drive the clustering of these subtypes. Notably, TGF-beta signaling is a critical factor that distinguishes two subtypes of high-grade tumors, and is associated with early tumor recurrence. Furthermore, both bioinformatics and functional analyses reveal molecular crosstalk between TGF-beta and WNT signaling pathways. These findings suggest that TGF-beta plays a critical role in a subclass of HCC tumors and may enhance WNT pathway activation in the absence of activating mutations in canonical pathway components. This study is an example of how robust molecular subclassification can be used to interrogate molecular abnormalities in the context of human cancer. Experiment Overall Design: Four hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cell line samples treated or untreated by TGF-beta
Project description:Serine-threonine kinase receptor-associated protein (STRAP) is upregulated in breast, colorectal and lung cancers, promoting their growth. We identify the upregulation of STRAP in hepatocellular carcinomas. Elevated STRAP endows tumor cells with growth advantage by reprograming a variety of metabolic processes and signaling pathways critical for hepatocellular carcinoma progression. Especially, enhanced Wnt/β-catenin signaling is likely to be a major effector of its tumor-promoting role.
Project description:Accumulating evidence suggests that DEAD-box proteins are essential in RNA metabolism and play pivotal roles in cancer progression. However, the mechanisms underlying how DDX24 drives hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remain largely unknown. In this study, we demonstrated that DDX24 was an oncogene and identified RFX8 as a DDX24 promoter-binding protein that transcriptionally upregulated DDX24 expression.
Project description:Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a highly heterogeneous disease, and prior attempts to develop genomic-based classification for HCC have yielded highly divergent results, indicating difficulty in identifying unified molecular anatomy. We performed a meta-analysis of gene expression profiles in data sets from eight independent patient cohorts across the world. In addition, aiming to establish the real world applicability of a classification system, we profiled 118 formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissues from an additional patient cohort. A total of 603 patients were analyzed, representing the major etiologies of HCC (hepatitis B and C) collected from Western and Eastern countries. We observed three robust HCC subclasses (termed S1, S2, and S3), each correlated with clinical parameters such as tumor size, extent of cellular differentiation, and serum alpha-fetoprotein levels. An analysis of the components of the signatures indicated that S1 reflected aberrant activation of the WNT signaling pathway, S2 was characterized by proliferation as well as MYC and AKT activation, and S3 was associated with hepatocyte differentiation. Functional studies indicated that the WNT pathway activation signature characteristic of S1 tumors was not simply the result of beta-catenin mutation but rather was the result of transforming growth factor-beta activation, thus representing a new mechanism of WNT pathway activation in HCC. These experiments establish the first consensus classification framework for HCC based on gene expression profiles and highlight the power of integrating multiple data sets to define a robust molecular taxonomy of the disease. Surgically resected 118 tumor tissues from patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)