Potential of ultra-highly sensitive immunoassays for hepatitis B surface and core-related antigens in patients with or without development of hepatocellular carcinoma after hepatitis B surface antigen seroclearance.

Aims: Hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) seroclearance indicates a "functional cure" in chronic hepatitis B (CHB) virus infection. However, several cases of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) development have been reported after HBsAg seroclearance. We evaluated the potential of HBsAg and hepatitis B core-related antigen (HBcrAg), measured by the ultra-highly sensitive assays, in cases with HCC development after HBsAg seroclearance.

Repeated hepatocyte injury promotes hepatic tumorigenesis in hepatitis C virus transgenic mice.

Although hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a well-known causative agent of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the mechanism by which HCV induces HCC remains obscure. To elucidate the role of HCV in hepatocarcinogenesis, a model of hepatocyte injury was established using HCV core transgenic mice, which were developed using C57BL/6 mice transfected with the HCV core gene under control of the serum amyloid P component promoter. After 18-24 months, neither steatosis nor hepatic tumors were found in transgenic mice.

Down-regulation of a novel gene, DRLM, in human liver malignancy from 4q22 that encodes a NAP-like protein.

Frequent observations of allelic loss in chromosomal band 4q21-22 in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) have suggested the presence of one or more tumor suppressor genes in this region. We screened HCC cell lines by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) to detect alterations in expression of genes within the region in question by examining expressed sequence tags located there. These experiments identified a full-length cDNA of 2311 bp in length encoding a novel, 182-amino-acid peptide belonging to the class of nucleosome assemble protein lacking nuclear localization signal sequence.