Jieliang Chen, Min Wu, Xiaonan Zhang, Wen Zhang, Zhanqing Zhang, Lixiang Chen, Jing He, Ye Zheng, Cuncun Chen, Fan Wang, Yunwen Hu, Xiaohui Zhou, Cong Wang, Yang Xu, Mengji Lu, Zhenghong Yuan – 19 September 2012 – Treatment with exogenous interferon (IFN)‐α is not effective in the majority of patients with chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. Recent evidence suggests that HBV has evolved strategies to block the nuclear translocation of signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT) 1 to limit IFN‐α–induced cellular antiviral responses.

John Aston – 19 September 2012

Yasuji Arase, Mariko Kobayashi, Fumitaka Suzuki, Yoshiyuki Suzuki, Yusuke Kawamura, Norio Akuta, Masahiro Kobayashi, Hitomi Sezaki, Satoshi Saito, Tetsuya Hosaka, Kenji Ikeda, Hiromitsu Kumada, Tetsuro Kobayashi – 18 September 2012 – The aim of this retrospective cohort study was to assess the cumulative development incidence and predictive factors for malignancies after the termination of interferon (IFN) therapy in Japanese patients for hepatitis C virus (HCV). A total of 4,302 HCV‐positive patients treated with IFN were enrolled. The mean observation period was 8.1 years.

Kristin A. Anderson, Dongning Wang, Matthew D. Hirschey – 18 September 2012

Kristin Wahl, Martin Siegemund, Frank Lehner, Florian Vondran, Andreas Nüssler, Florian Länger, Till Krech, Roland Kontermann, Michael P. Manns, Klaus Schulze‐Osthoff, Klaus Pfizenmaier, Heike Bantel – 18 September 2012 – As the result of an increasing incidence and a prevalent therapy resistance of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), there is a strong need for novel strategies to enhance treatment responses in HCC.

Norihisa Ichinohe, Naoki Tanimizu, Hidekazu Ooe, Yukio Nakamura, Toru Mizuguchi, Junko Kon, Koichi Hirata, Toshihiro Mitaka – 18 September 2012 – Oval cells and small hepatocytes (SHs) are known to be hepatic stem and progenitor cells. Although oval cells are believed to differentiate into mature hepatocytes (MHs) through SHs, the details of their differentiation process are not well understood. Furthermore, it is not certain whether the induced cells possess fully mature functions as MHs.

Zhong‐Bin Deng, Xiaoying Zhuang, Songwen Ju, Xiaoyu Xiang, Jingyao Mu, Qilong Wang, Hong Jiang, Lifeng Zhang, Mitchell Kronenberg, Jun Yan, Donald Miller, Huang‐Ge Zhang – 18 September 2012 – The Wnt/β‐catenin pathway has been known to play a role in induction of immune tolerance, but its role in the induction and maintenance of natural killer T (NKT) cell anergy is unknown. We found that activation of the Wnt pathways in the liver microenvironment is important for induction of NKT cell anergy.

Dorothy Ngo‐Yin Fan, Felice Ho‐Ching Tsang, Aegean Hoi‐Kam Tam, Sandy Leung‐Kuen Au, Carmen Chak‐Lui Wong, Lai Wei, Joyce Man‐Fong Lee, Xianghuo He, Irene Oi‐Lin Ng, Chun‐Ming Wong – 18 September 2012 – Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a major liver malignancy. We previously demonstrated that deregulation of epigenetic regulators is a common event in human HCC.

Diethard Monbaliu, Qiang Liu, Louis Libbrecht, Rita De Vos, Katrien Vekemans, Charlotte Debbaut, Olivier Detry, Tania Roskams, Jos van Pelt, Jacques Pirenne – 17 September 2012 – The wider use of livers from expanded criteria donors and donation after circulatory death donors may help to improve access to liver transplantation. A prerequisite for safely using these higher risk livers is the development of objective criteria for assessing their condition before transplantation.

Kouichi Miura, Ling Yang, Nico van Rooijen, David A. Brenner, Hirohide Ohnishi, Ekihiro Seki – 17 September 2012 – Innate immune signaling associated with Toll‐like receptors (TLRs) is a key pathway involved in the progression of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). Here we show that both TLR2 and palmitic acid are required for activation of the inflammasome, interleukin (IL)‐1α, and IL‐1β, resulting in the progression of NASH. Wild‐type (WT) and TLR2−/− mice were fed a choline‐deficient amino acid–defined (CDAA) diet for 22 weeks to induce NASH.