Recent advances in liver cancer research are at a glance

October 27, 2020 // -- This issue brings you the latest research advances in the field of liver cancer, and I hope readers and friends will enjoy it.
1. JCRC: A new study reveals that a team of scientists led by Professor Olga Dontsova of Skoltech has discovered a new type of liver-specific non-coded RNA.
researchers tracked cancer-affected RNA in a healthy liver and recommended using specific RNA as biomarkers to provide new guidance for postoperative diagnosis of various liver cancers.
the study was published in Journal of Cancer Research and Clinical Oncology.
research was funded by the Russian Science Foundation (RSF).
tumor markers can help doctors determine if a patient has cancer.
any substance that exhibits different concentrations in diseased and healthy individuals can be used as a tumor marker: including non-coded RNA.
non-coding RNA is divided into general RNA present in all human cells and tissue-specific RNA present in certain organs and tissues.
scientists found a previously unsealed non-coding RNA in the liver that could be used as a biomarker.
they named it the new molecule HELLIS because, unlike classic tumor markers, they can be used as a healthy liver biomarker and even as an anti-tumor marker. Olga Burenina, a research scientist at the
Skoltech Center for Life Sciences (CLS) and lead author of the paper, believes this may be an advantage: "Many classic tumor markers do not always appear in the case of cancer, or may have elevated hemoglobin levels due to non-cancerous diseases such as cirrhosis or hepatitis."
organizations involved in the joint study included the Cancer Institute of the Russian Cancer Research Centre in Blokhin, Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, and the Petrovsky National Surgical Research Centre, which provided postoperative samples of six types of liver tumors.
successfully showed that HELLIS levels in all samples declined well below normal levels, while several malignancies disappeared altogether.
, the scientists studied the behavior of some known non-coding RNA in these samples and selected three other potential tumor markers.
results, they obtained a group of four biomarkers, which are expressed in various types of liver cancer differences and, importantly, help distinguish between benign and malignant tumors.
"At the moment, there is no good diagnostic marker for liver cancer, so doctors make the diagnosis primarily based on ultrasound or CT tests and surgically remove the entire tumor, independent of the suspected type of cancer."
because biopsies are rare, the final diagnosis is based on histological results available after 10 to 14 days.
," explains Olga Burenina.
new biomarker groups can be used for rapid initial diagnosis based on postoperative liver tumor samples, as well as for other analyses of clinical cases.2. Cell: Revealing the molecular mechanisms of runaway camp molecules that cause liver cancer doi:10.1016/j.cell.2020.07.043 Since humans first controlled the fire, they have been camping around the fire, spreading information, signaling each other when there is a danger, and similarly, specific molecules carrying special information around the cell may be able to help as needed. Regulating the function of our bodies, a molecule called cyclic AMP (cAMP) may move freely within cells and help manage different processes in the body, and it seems incredible that it will continue to react to changes in the environment in the right place and at the right time, so it's not clear how camp does that, scientists from institutions such as the University of California explain, the results of which appear in the international journal Cell. 'We are very interested in studying the effects of camp on the health of the body,' said
researcher Professor Susan Taylor, who engineered fluorescence tools to combine gene-editing technology CRISPR with biosensor technology, which helps researchers look inside cells in a new way, and found that out-of-control campamps may lead to a rare form of liver cancer, fibrolla carrcinoma.
the researchers explain that cAMP and calcium ions are two important secondary signaling molecules needed by human cells, and their action points are usually carefully regulated by binding proteins, kinases, and stent proteins, which form signaling molecular groups.
Researchers believe that cells are usually made up of membrane-wrapped cells that function like rooms in a factory, such as the cell's energy factory, mitochondrials, and were surprised to find that a major protein that binds to cAMP can form membraneless (wallless) cells in cells through a process similar to oil droplets forming in water.
cAMP is dynamically isolated into these membraneless cells, and when these structures are destroyed, cAMP floods cells, causing them to grow out of control, triggering tumors; the researchers say most FLC patients carry a mutation in which important camp-regulating proteins are added to an unrelated protein, although researchers know that the hybrid protein causes FLC tumors to form, but they don't know the exact molecular mechanism.
In this study, the researchers found that carcinogenic fusion proteins interfere with membraneless cells containing camp, which causes camp to flood cells, while normal liver cells that lose the ability to form membrane-free cells containing camp exhibit out-of-control cell growth patterns, which are a hallmark of cancer, and this study also reveals the specific mechanisms behind the occurrence of FLC and how out-of-control cAMP causes cancer.
researcher Jin Zhang said that although they account for only 1 percent of the cell's total volume, these membraneless cells absorb 99 percent of the cell tissue, and these membrane-free cells containing CAMP can also be completely interfered with by FLC carcinogenic fusion proteins, which can help researchers accidentally discover the mechanisms of their carcinogenic effects.
Because camp is important to every human cell and is present in membraneless cells in the brain, heart and pancreatic cells, researchers are currently analyzing the function of these dynamic structures in these particular cell types; Focusing on the many membraneless cells formed in biological systems, future researchers will delve deeper into what remains in these membraneless cells and gain an in-depth understanding of what rules promote the entry and stay of special molecules in these membraneless cells, and as they are directly related to the occurrence of cancer, later researchers will continue to delve deeper into the molecular mechanisms that reveal runaway camp-induced cancer.
3. J Hepatol: Mother obesity increases the risk of liver cancer in future generations and can accumulate over generations! DOI: 10.1016/j.jhep.2020.03.050 Scientists recognize the link between obesity in mothers and liver cancer in the offspring of obese mothers, but the mechanism is unclear.
in a new study published in the journal Journal of Hepatology, researchers found a microRNA in obese female mice that appears to transmit susceptible to liver cancer and increase the risk of liver cancer in children and offspring.
third of the world's population is overweight or obese, and the global obesity epidemic is threatening human health.
increases the risk of metabolic diseases such as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).
, up to 50% of recently diagnosed HCC is caused by liver metabolic disorders such as NAFLD.
mother's obesity directly affects the health of future generations and plays a key role in obesity and metabolic diseases.
epidemiological studies have shown that obesity is an independent risk factor for liver cancer.
new study provides insight into whether and how obesity in mothers affects the incidence of cancer in future generations.
researchers induced liver cancer in obese mice that ate high-fat foods with D.E. nitrosamines (DEN), and then sequenced RNA to determine generational changes in genes and microRNAs.
they found that injecting microRNA miR-27a-3p into pregnant mice not only increased the liver's miR-27a-3p, reducing the expression of two genes, Axl1 and Aldh2, in children (fetal, early and progeny), but also exacerbated the development of DEN-treated children's HCC.
high-fat diet causes mothers to become susceptible to DEN-induced HCC in offspring, and the researchers confirm that this susceptivity accumulates from generation to generation.
, the risk of liver cancer increases between generations.
, for example, children born to obese mothers and grandmothers are more severe than children born to obese mothers who are normal weight.
also analyzed human HCC samples.
researchers say their findings provide a mechanism link between maternal obesity and the development of disease in future generations, which could help explore the treatment and prevention of fetal and developmental diseases.
for pregnant women, serum miR-27a-3p levels are critical to the health of future generations and may be used as biomarkers for diagnosis or prediction in the future.
, the researchers are calling for a global effort to tackle multigeneral obesity in humans to better address the common problem we face.
this study opens up a new avenue for cancer research at the crossroads of metabolism and metastrogenetics.
it brings new information about how mum stress affects her offspring and, in turn, the development of HCC.
model of inheritance is not a traditional model of intergenerational inheritance.
this is multigeneral because susceptible to HCC gradually increases over generations.
4. Cell: Scientists have developed a new blood test that could effectively improve screening for people with liver cancer DOI:10.1016/j.cell.2020.05.038 In a study published in the international journal Cell, scientists from the National Cancer Institute and others have developed a new test that can help identify people more likely to develop liver cell carcinoma (HCC, Hepatocellular carcinoma, the most common type of liver cancer in the population, is a new method that uses simple blood tests to check whether a patient has previously been exposed to a specific viral infection. when combined with current screening methods, the new test plays an important role in screening people at risk for HCC, helping clinicians detect and treat HCC as early as possible, and is relatively simple and inexpensive, requiring only a small number of blood samples from patients to be tested, said Xin Wei Wang, a researcher at
.
Seconded factors increase an individual's risk of HCC, such as hepatitis B or C virus infection, or cirrhosis, and people with risk factors are often recommended for HCC screening every six months, i.e. using ultrasound or α-a-fetal protein in the blood.
Not every individual carrying HCC risk factors becomes ill, and while screening can help individuals with early detection, many patients are diagnosed when the cancer progresses to a late stage or is incurable, but early detection of HCC patients often has a better chance of being cured.
researchers say we need a better way to identify those at the highest risk of carrying HCC, as well as those who should be screened frequently, and better early detection and monitoring is especially important because of the rising incidence of HCC in the United States.
researcher Tim Gretten said: 'Our liver cancer research program now focuses on developing new ways to detect, diagnose, treat and improve treatment outcomes in HCC patients, and many screening tests can detect the multiple characteristics of cancer cells, but these characteristics change over time, and not all cancer cells in the tumor have the same characteristics, so the researchers have adopted a different approach, that is, to detect the characteristics of the cancer microencourse without the characteristics of the cancer cells themselves.'
After further research, the researchers found that the occurrence of cancer is affected by the interaction between the virus and the immune system, so the researchers wanted to know whether the characteristic interaction between the virus and the host immune system increases the body's risk of HCC; to analyze this possibility, the researchers tested the participants' blood samples to look for the "footprints" left by past viral infections, which remain on antibodies that reflect how the body's immune system reacts to infection, and each body's footprints create a special pattern of virus exposure.
then tested more than 1,000 different viral footprints in blood samples from about 900 people, including 150 HCC patients, to identify specific virus exposure markers that were accurate The characteristics of distinguishing HCC patients, chronic liver disease patients, and healthy volunteers also included information from 61 non-viral footprints; the researchers also analyzed blood samples from 173 patients with chronic liver disease, and 44 participants developed HCC during the study period, using their blood when the patient's cancer was diagnosed