Marina Knight, Kerri Barber, Alex Gimson, Dave Collett, James Neuberger, for the Liver Advisory Group of National Health Service Blood Transplant – 12 January 2012 – The limited availability of livers donated by deceased donors for transplantation means that not everyone who might benefit from the procedure can receive a graft, so any selection and allocation system must have clearly defined goals. The United Kingdom, in common with many other countries, has adopted a minimum benefit criterion of a greater than 50% probability of survival 5 years after transplantation.

Richard S. Mangus, Jonathan A. Fridell, Rodrigo M. Vianna, Paul Y. Kwo, Jeanne Chen, A. Joseph Tector – 12 January 2012 – Rabbit anti‐thymocyte globulin (rATG)–based immunosuppression induction is being increasingly used in liver transplantation (LT) in conjunction with steroid‐free protocols to delay the initiation of calcineurin inhibitors. This study reports a single‐center comparison of transplant outcomes and complications in 3 immunosuppression eras. Data were obtained retrospectively from a center research database, and the analysis included LT patients from 2001 to 2008.

Asunción Moreno, Carlos Cervera, Antonio Rimola, Jose M. Miró – 12 January 2012

Giuseppe Fede, Luisa Spadaro, Tania Tomaselli, Graziella Privitera, Giacomo Germani, Emmanuel Tsochatzis, Michael Thomas, Pierre‐Marc Bouloux, Andrew K. Burroughs, Francesco Purrello – 11 January 2012 – In patients with cirrhosis, adrenal insufficiency (AI) is reported during sepsis and septic shock and is associated with increased mortality. Consequently, the term “hepato‐adrenal syndrome” was proposed. Some studies have shown that AI is frequent in stable cirrhosis as well as in cirrhosis associated with decompensation other than sepsis, such as bleeding and ascites.

Jin‐Hua Sun, Donald R. O'Boyle II, Yan Zhang, Chunfu Wang, Peter Nower, Lourdes Valera, Susan Roberts, Richard E. Nettles, Robert A. Fridell, Min Gao – 11 January 2012 – The influence of naturally occurring polymorphisms on the potency of the HCV nonstructural protein 5A (NS5A) replication complex inhibitor, BMS‐790052, was investigated by evaluating hybrid replicons in which the entire NS5A coding region of genotype (GT) la and 1b laboratory (lab) strains (H77c and Con1) were replaced with the corresponding regions of specimens collected from 10 GT‐1a‐ and 6 GT‐1b‐infected subjects.

YuXiang Fang, Jing‐Lun Xue, Qi Shen, Jinzhong Chen, Ling Tian – 11 January 2012 – MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are known to be involved in carcinogenesis and tumor progression in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Recently, microRNA‐7 (miR‐7) has been proven to play a substantial role in glioblastoma and breast cancer, but its functions in the context of HCC remain unknown. Here, we demonstrate that miR‐7 inhibits HCC cell growth and metastasis invitro and in vivo. We first screened and identified a novel miR‐7 target, phosphoinositide 3‐kinase catalytic subunit delta (PIK3CD).

Josh Levitsky, James M. Mathew, Michael Abecassis, Anat Tambur, Joseph Leventhal, Dhivya Chandrasekaran, Nancy Herrera, Patrice Al‐Saden, Lorenzo Gallon, Anmaar Abdul‐Nabi, Guang‐Yu Yang, Sunil M. Kurian, Daniel R. Salomon, Joshua Miller – 11 January 2012 – Immunosuppression (IS) withdrawal from calcineurin inhibitors is only possible in ∼20% of liver transplant recipients. However, mammalian target of rapamycin inhibitors (e.g., sirolimus; SRL) appear to be more immunoregulatory and might promote a tolerant state for withdrawal.

Florence Grise, Sandra Sena, Aurélien Bidaud‐Meynard, Jessica Baud, Jean‐Baptiste Hiriart, Kassem Makki, Nathalie Dugot‐Senant, Cathy Staedel, Paulette Bioulac‐Sage, Jessica Zucman‐Rossi, Jean Rosenbaum, Violaine Moreau – 11 January 2012 – We performed a review of public microarray data that revealed a significant down‐regulation of Rnd3 expression in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), as compared to nontumor liver. Rnd3/RhoE is an atypical RhoGTPase family member because it is always under its active GTP‐bound conformation and not sensitive to classical regulators.

Piero Amodio, Sara Montagnese, Carlo Merkel – 11 January 2012

Nicolas Dupin, Vincent Mallet, Agnès Carlotti, Anaïs Vallet‐Pichard, Stanislas Pol – 11 January 2012