A. Okajima, K. Miyazawa, Y. Naitoh, K. Inoue, N. Kitamura – 30 December 2003 – Hepatocyte growth factor activator (HGFA) is a serine protease that is responsible for localized activation of hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) in injured tissue. The activated HGF may be involved in regeneration of the injured tissue. HGFA is produced and secreted by the liver and circulates in the plasma as an inactive zymogen. In response to tissue injury, the HGFA zymogen is converted to the active form by limited proteolysis.

D. Montgomery Bissell – 30 December 2003

Vivian McAlister – 30 December 2003

Walter H. Gunzburg – 30 December 2003

Michael A. Zimmerman, James F. Trotter – 30 December 2003 – Key points

Marcelo Kugelmas, Michael J. Osgood, James F. Trotter, Thomas Bak, Michael Wachs, Lisa Forman, Igal Kam, Gregory T. Everson – 30 December 2003 – We recently reported on a series of patients who experienced acute cellular rejection (ACR) during the treatment of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection in our posttransplantation cohort. Our hypothesis is that HCV clearance improves hepatic microsomal function, which in turn results in lower trough cyclosporine (CyA) and tacrolimus (TAC) levels, predisposing the patient to ACR.

R. Mark Ghobrial, Ronald W. Busuttil – 30 December 2003 – Key points

T. Kumada, S. Nakano, I. Takeda, K. Sugiyama, T. Osada, S. Kiriyama, Y. Sone, H. Toyoda, S. Shimada, M. Takahashi, T. Sassa – 30 December 2003 – To assess intrahepatic metastasis (IM) and multicentric occurrence (MO) after initial treatment of small hepatocellular carcinomas (HCC) ≦ 2 cm in diameter, we performed clinical and pathological studies in 112 patients who underwent percutaneous ethanol injection therapy (PEIT) or hepatic resection for HCC from January 1985 to December 1994.

G. Covini, E. K. Chan, M. Nishioka, S. A. Morshed, S. I. Reed, E. M. Tan – 30 December 2003 – Proteins expressed by plasmids encoding human cyclins and cyclin‐dependent kinase 2 (CDK2) were used as antigens in immunoblotting. Fifteen of 100 patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) were found to have autoantibodies reactive with cyclin B1 and with a 40‐kd degradation product of cyclin B1‐glutathione‐S‐transferase (GST) fusion protein. Only one serum was found to react with cyclin A and another single serum with CDK2 but no antibodies were detected to cyclin D1 and E.

K. Harada, J. Van de Water, P. S. Leung, R. L. Coppel, Y. Nakanuma, M. E. Gershwin – 30 December 2003 – Pyruvate dehydrogenase‐E2, or a cross‐reactive molecule, has been shown by a variety of immunohistochemical methods to be present in increased amounts in biliary epithelial cells (BEC) in primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC).