Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a worldwide liver disease and nearly 25% of chronic HBV infections terminate in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Currently, there is no effective therapy to inhibit HBV replication and to eliminate hepatoma cells, making it highly desired to develop novel therapies for these two stages of the HBV-caused detrimental disease. Recently, short hairpin RNA (shRNA)...

Studies on insulin resistance of liver cells are often performed with the use of various hepatoma cell lines. Such an approach allows investigating selected biochemical pathways at the cellular level. However, possible modifications of metabolic processes due to the neoplastic nature of such cells must be considered. Expanding the diversity of hepatoma cell lines used in metabolic studies could...

Treatment of hepatocyte-hepatoma hybrid cells with Clostridium botulinum C2 toxin led to a 167% increase in monomeric globular actin (G-actin) and to a 57% decrease in filamentous actin (F-actin) within 2 h. Simultaneously, the level of actin mRNA was specifically decreased to 49% and actin synthesis was significantly diminished. In contrast, treatment of hybrid cells with phalloidin led to a d...

In this study, we aimed to evaluate the potential anticancer and antiangiogenic effects of FTY720 on hepatocellular carcinoma. In vitro, chemosensitivity was tested on hepatoma cells, nontumorigenic, immortalized hepatocyte cells, as well as human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC). Moreover, effect of FTY720 on cell cycle and apoptosis was analyzed. In addition, a number of angiogenesis-...

Many solid tumor cells exhibit mitochondrial respiratory impairment; however, the mechanisms of such impairment in cancer development remain unclear. Here, we demonstrate that SNU human hepatoma cells with declined mitochondrial respiratory activity showed decreased expression of mitochondrial 8-oxoguanine DNA glycosylase/lyase (mtOGG1), a mitochondrial DNA repair enzyme; similar results were o...

Conventional chemotherapy fails to cure metastatic hepatoma mainly due to its high hepatotoxicity. Many plant-derived agents have been accepted to effectively inhibit hepatoma cell invasion. However, the investigation that whether effectual plant-derived agents against invasive hepatoma cells exert unexpected cytotoxicity in healthy hepatocytes has been ignored. This study demonstrated that ber...

In Tangier disease, absence of ATP binding cassette transporter A1 (ABCA1) results in reduced plasma HDL and elevated triglyceride (TG) levels. We hypothesized that hepatocyte ABCA1 regulates VLDL TG secretion through nascent HDL production. Silencing of ABCA1 expression in oleate-stimulated rat hepatoma cells resulted in: 1) decreased large nascent HDL (>10 nm diameter) and increased small nas...

It is important for metastatic cancer cells to acquire anoikis resistance for survival in the circulatory system. In the present study, metastatic hepatoma cells were demonstrated to acquire anoikis resistance, which renders them more invasive, more resistant to anticancer agents and able to evade the host immune system for long‑term survival. One of the most significant characteristics of thes...

The effects of somatostatin (SRIF), insulin, and triiodothyronine (T3) on the growth of human hepatoma cells were investigated on the well-differentiated human hepatoma cell line Hep3B. Results showed that both insulin and T3 can stimulate cell growth of serum starved Hep3B cells at physiological concentrations. SRIF alone showed little growth-promoting activity. When added concurrently with in...