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Abstract
BACKGROUND: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common form of primary liver cancer, is the third leading cause of cancer-related death in human. Alcohol is a known risk factor for HCC. However it is still unclear whether and how alcohol enhances the progression and metastasis of existing HCC.
METHODS AND RESULTS: We first retrospectively investigated 52 HCC patients (24 alcohol-drinkers and 28 non-drinkers), and found a positive correlation between alcohol consumption and advanced Tumor-Node-Metastasis (TNM) stages, higher vessel invasion and poorer prognosis. In vitro and in vivo experiments further indicated that alcohol promoted the progression and migration/invasion of HCC. Specifically, in a 3-D tumor/endothelial co-culture system, we found that alcohol enhanced the migration/invasion of HepG2 cells and increased tumor angiogenesis. Consistently, higher expression of VEGF, MCP-1 and NF-κB was observed in HCC tissues of alcohol-drinkers. Alcohol induced the accumulation of intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) and the activation of NF-κB signaling in HepG2 cells. Conversely, blockage of alcohol-mediated ROS accumulation and NF-κB signaling inhibited alcohol-induced expression of VEGF and MCP-1, the tumor growth, angiogenesis and metastasis.
CONCLUSION: This study suggested that chronic moderate alcohol consumption may promote the progression and metastasis of HCC; the oncogenic effect may be at least partially mediated by the ROS accumulation and NF-ĸB-dependent VEGF and MCP-1 up-regulation.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-27-2015
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12943-014-0274-0
Repository Citation
Wang, Fei; Yang, Jin-Lian; Yu, Ke-Ke; Xu, Mei; Xu, You-Zhi; Chen, Li; Lu, Yan-Min; Fang, Hao-Shu; Wang, Xin-Yi; Hu, Zhong-Qian; Li, Fei-Fei; Kan, Lixin; Luo, Jia; and Wang, Si-Ying, "Activation of the NF-κB Pathway as a Mechanism of Alcohol Enhanced Progression and Metastasis of Human Hepatocellular Carcinoma" (2015). Pharmacology and Nutritional Sciences Faculty Publications. 26.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/pharmacol_facpub/26
Included in
Medical Nutrition Commons, Medical Pharmacology Commons, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health Commons
Notes/Citation Information
Published in Molecular Cancer, v. 14, article 10, p. 1-14.
© 2015 Wang et al.; licensee BioMed Central.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.