Hui Kam M
Bek Chai Heah Laboratory of Cancer Genomics, Division of Cellular and Molecular Research, National Cancer Centre, 11 Hospital Drive, Singapore 169610.
Curr Opin Mol Ther. 2007 Aug;9(4):378-84.
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the predominant histological subtype of primary human liver cancer, is one of the most prevalent cancer types worldwide, accounting for an estimated 500,000 deaths annually. The clinical management of HCC is challenging on many counts. HCC is a phenotypically and genetically heterogeneous polyclonal disease and is resistant to most conventional chemotherapy. Early manifestation of HCC is characteristically silent and slow growing with few symptoms, and HCC is therefore often diagnosed at an advanced stage, when potentially curative surgical or local ablative therapy is not feasible. Therefore, clinically validated biomarkers that could confer pathological and functional changes associated with the formation and progression of HCC are urgently needed to provide important molecular basis for the development of novel treatments. Recently, comprehensive molecular gene profiling of primary liver cancer tissues has been employed to identify specific genes that are linked to hepatocarcinogenesis. Current attempts to translate molecular knowledge to design strategies for the experimental gene therapy of HCC are reviewed.
肝细胞癌（HCC）是原发性人类肝癌的主要组织学亚型，是全球最常见的癌症类型之一，估计每年导致50万人死亡。HCC的临床管理在很多方面都具有挑战性。HCC是一种表型和基因异质性的多克隆疾病，对大多数传统化疗具有抗性。HCC的早期表现通常没有症状且生长缓慢，因此HCC常常在晚期才被诊断出来，而此时可能治愈的手术或局部消融治疗已不可行。因此，迫切需要经过临床验证的生物标志物，这些标志物能够反映与HCC形成和进展相关的病理和功能变化，为开发新的治疗方法提供重要的分子基础。最近，原发性肝癌组织的全面分子基因图谱分析已被用于识别与肝癌发生相关的特定基因。本文综述了目前将分子知识转化为设计HCC实验性基因治疗策略的尝试。
