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Abstract Details
Inflammation induced hepatocellular carcinoma is dependent on CCR5
Barashi N, Weiss ID, Wald O, Wald H, Beider K, Abraham M, Klein S, Goldenberg D, Axelrod J, Pikarsky E, Abramovitch R, Zeira E, Galun E, Peled A. Hepatology. 2013 Mar 21. doi: 10.1002/hep.26403. [Epub ahead of print]
Source
Goldyne Savad Institute of Gene Therapy, Israel.
Abstract
Human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is an inflammation-induced cancer which is the third leading cause of cancer mortality worldwide. We investigated the role of the chemokine receptor CCR5 and CCR1 in regulating inflammation and tumorigenesis in an inflammation induced HCC model in mice. Mdr2-knockout (Mdr2-KO) mice spontaneously develop chronic cholestatic hepatitis and fibrosis that is eventually followed by HCC. We generated two new strains from the Mdr2-KO mouse the Mdr2:CCR5 and the Mdr2:CCR1 double knockouts (DKO) and set out to compare inflammation and tumorigenesis among these strains. We found that in Mdr2 knockout mice lacking the chemokine receptor CCR5 (Mdr2:CCR5 DKO mice) but not CCR1 (Mdr2:CCR1 DKO), macrophage recruitment and trafficking to the liver was significantly reduced. Furthermore, in the absence of CCR5 reduced inflammation was also associated with reduced periductal accumulation of CD24+ oval cells and abrogation of fibrosis. The double knockout mice for Mdr2 and CCR5 exhibited a significant decrease in tumor incidence and size. CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate that CCR5 has a critical role in both the development and progression of liver cancer. We therefore propose that CCR5 antagonist can serve for HCC cancer prevention and treatment.