The Association Between Hepatitis B Virus Mutations and the Risk of Liver Disease and Hepatocellular Carcinoma.

Hepatitis B virus [HBV], the best-described hepadnavirus, is distributed all around the world and may lead to chronic and acute liver disease, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma. Despite the advancement in treatment against HBV, an errorprone reverse transcriptase, which is required for HBV replication as well as host immune pressure, leads to constant evolution and emergence of genotypes, subgenotypes and mutant viruses; so, HBV will remain as a major healthcare problem around the world. This review article mainly focuses on the HBV mutations which correlated to occult HBV infection, immune escape, vaccine failure and eventually liver cirrhosis and HCC.

CRISPR/Cas9-mediated knockout of MLL5 enhances apoptotic effect of cisplatin in HeLa cells .

Mixed lineage leukemia 5 (MLL5) transactivates the expression of E6 and E7 oncogenes in cervical cancer cells. In this study, we utilized CRISPR/Cas9 system with the aim to target HPV-E6 and MLL5 to enhance apoptosis efficiency in HPV-18 positive HeLa cells and to improve chemotherapeutic efficacy of Cisplatin as the most common anticancer drug, used for cervical cancer. sgRNAs against MLL5 and E6 were designed and cloned into PX458 plasmid vector.