BioProject

Chronic inflammation is a common underlying condition associated with tumor development, accounting for approximately 20% of human cancers. More...

Chronic inflammation is a common underlying condition associated with tumor development, accounting for approximately 20% of human cancers. This association is especially apparent in Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), which often develops on the background of chronic hepatitis and hepatic fibrosis, slowly unfolding on a background of chronic inflammation. HCC is one of the most common tumors worldwide, exhibiting a very poor prognosis and high mortality rate with limited available therapeutic tools. The etiology of liver cancer is well known, however there is still a lack of precise knowledge about pathogenesis of HCC. IL-6 have been shown to be of importance for liver protection and prevention of liver injury in animal models of acute sclerosing cholangitis and correlate with increased HCC in human patients. Using a murine model of chronic cholangitis based on the ablation of the Mdr2 gene, this study has examined the role of IL-6 signaling in chronic hepatitis and in the subsequent development of liver cancer. The main observations of this study are that IL-6 signaling in female Mdr2-KO mice protects from the development of liver injury and fibrosis, but simultaneously rduced tumor initiation. To reveal the affected molecular pathways that lead to increased cholestasis and bile acid–induced liver injury, and increased tumorigenesis in the female IL-6 deficient Mdr2-KO/IL6-KO mice, we performed gene array analysis and identified distinct classes of differentially-expressed genes in these mice. Overall design: We performed genome-scale gene expression profiling by Affymetrix analysis on tumor-free livers samples from Mdr2-KO, Mdr2-KO/IL6-KO, and wild type C57BL/6 mice at the age of 14 months. Less...