Hepatitis B virus X protein blunts senescence‐like growth arrest of human hepatocellular carcinoma by reducing Notch1 cleavage

Jiejie Xu, Xiaojing Yun, Jianhai Jiang, Yuanyan Wei, Yihong Wu, Wei Zhang, Yeheng Liu, Wenzhong Wang, Yumei Wen, Jianxin Gu – 23 June 2010 – One of the serious sequelae of chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Among all the proteins encoded by the HBV genome, hepatitis B virus X protein (HBx) is highly associated with the development of HCC. Although Notch1 signaling has been found to exert a tumor‐suppressive function during HCC development, the mechanism of interaction between HBx expression and Notch1 signaling needs to be explored.

Regulation of multidrug resistance‐associated protein 2 by calcium signaling in mouse liver

Laura N. Cruz, Mateus T. Guerra, Emma Kruglov, Albert Mennone, Celia R. S. Garcia, Ju Chen, Michael H. Nathanson – 23 June 2010 – Multidrug resistance associated protein 2 (Mrp2) is a canalicular transporter responsible for organic anion secretion into bile. Mrp2 activity is regulated by insertion into the plasma membrane; however, the factors that control this are not understood. Calcium (Ca2+) signaling regulates exocytosis of vesicles in most cell types, and the type II inositol 1,4,5‐triphosphate receptor (InsP3R2) regulates Ca2+ release in the canalicular region of hepatocytes.

Risk of malignant neoplasms of liver and biliary tract in diabetic patients with different age and sex stratifications

Hua‐Fen Chen, Peter Chen, Chung‐Yi Li – 23 June 2010 – We prospectively investigated 615,532 diabetic patients and 614,871 age‐matched and sex‐matched control subjects selected from National Health Insurance claims for malignant neoplasms of liver and biliary tract (International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 9th edition, codes 155 and 156, respectively) between 2000 and 2006. The person‐year approach with Poisson assumption was used to estimate the hazard rates.

Knockout of secretin receptor reduces large cholangiocyte hyperplasia in mice with extrahepatic cholestasis induced by bile duct ligation

Shannon Glaser, Ian P. Lam, Antonio Franchitto, Eugenio Gaudio, Paolo Onori, Billy K. Chow, Candace Wise, Shelley Kopriva, Julie Venter, Mellanie White, Yoshiyuki Ueno, David Dostal, Guido Carpino, Romina Mancinelli, Wendy Butler, Valorie Chiasson, Sharon DeMorrow, Heather Francis, Gianfranco Alpini – 23 June 2010 – During bile duct ligation (BDL), the growth of large cholangiocytes is regulated by the cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP)/extracellular signal‐regulated kinase 1/2 (ERK1/2) pathway and is closely associated with increased secretin receptor (SR) expression.

Aquaporin‐1 facilitates angiogenic invasion in the pathological neovasculature that accompanies cirrhosis

Robert C. Huebert, Meher M. Vasdev, Uday Shergill, Amitava Das, Bing Q. Huang, Michael R. Charlton, Nicholas F. LaRusso, Vijay H. Shah – 23 June 2010 – Increasing evidence suggests that hepatic fibrosis and pathological angiogenesis are interdependent processes that occur in parallel. Endothelial cell invasion is requisite for angiogenesis, and thus studies of the mechanisms governing liver endothelial cell (LEC) invasion during cirrhosis are of great importance.

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