الفهرس 
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)Only 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most aggressive malignancies worldwide and one of the main causes of cancer-related mortality globally. Although the HCC treatment protocols tend to be diversified and combined, it is difficult to achieve further improvement in the long-term survival of HCC patients in the last 10 years.
Liver resection or transplantation is the first choice for HCC treatment so far. However, the high recurrence rate compromises the long-term survival of patients undergoing curative resection. Fully 60% to 70% of patients develop recurrence or metastasis within 5 years after resection.
Therefore, investigating tumor markers for better prediction of postoperative recurrence or metastasis may help surgeons to adopt preventive strategies for patients at high risk. Compared with normal hepatocytes, there are many surface molecules high expressed on the surface of HCC cells considered potential therapeutic targets for HCC, but unsuitable for HCC diagnosis.
In the past decade, GPC3, which specifically expressed on the surface of HCC cells, has become a new star molecule with high correlation with the occurrence and development of HCC.
GPC3 is specifically expressed in liver cancer tissues, and presents as soluble GPC3 (sGPC3) in peripheral blood of HCC patients, while its expression is not detected in the liver tissues of healthy adults, or pathological samples of fatty liver, or liver with cirrhosis, hepatitis, or injury, suggesting that GPC3 is a more reliable tumor marker than alpha-fetoprotein (AFP).
Not only GPC3 can be used as a biomarker for diagnosis, but also as an important target for immunotherapy of HCC. Normally, GPC-3 is involved in the regulation of cell proliferation and survival during embryonic development and plays a crucial role as a tumor suppressor.
The study is aimed to study the role of Glypican 3 levels in the diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma in Egyptian patients and its prognostic role after successful treatment.
This is a Case control study, was conducted in Internal Medicine department- Ain Shams University Hospitals on 60 patients divided into 2 groups: (group 1): included 30 patients with liver cirrhosis and HCC on top, (group 2): included 30 patients with liver cirrhosis and no evidence of HCC.
The main results of the study revealed that:
There was insignificant difference between groups as regard Age, sex or smoking.
There was insignificant difference between both groups as regard Bilharziasis or Diabetes.
There was insignificant difference between both groups as regard Ascites.
There was significant difference between both groups as regard Bilirubin direct.
There were high significant difference between both groups as regard ALT and Total protein.
There was high significant difference between both groups as regard Creatinine.
There was high significant difference between both groups as regard AFP.
There were insignificant difference between both groups as regard HCV-Ab,and HBsAg.
There was high significant difference between both groups as regard GPC3.
Based on our results we recommend for further studies on larger patients and longer period of follow up to emphasize our conclusion.
CONCLUSION
Glypican-3 can be a valuable diagnostic marker for HCC diagnosis and prognosis after various treatment modalities and may be complementary to alpha fetoprotein increasing overall sensitivity of HCC detection.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Further studies on large geographical scale and on larger sample size to emphasize our conclusion.
More patients, longer follow-up, and multicenter experience are all necessary to accurately figure out the role of serum GPC-3 in the early diagnosis of HCC.
Additional future studies must be conducted on the regulation of GPC3 expression to obtain drugs that exhibit stronger tumor-suppression activity than do currently available GPC3-targeting drugs.
In addition to finding new tumor therapeutic targets, it is necessary to study the regulation of GPC3 expression to prevent the emergence of drug-resistant clones during the treatment.