In HCC < or =3 cm, the frequency (77%) of MXR7 mRNA expression was significantly higher than that of elevated serum AFP (43%; P < 0.007) and AFP mRNA expression in HCC (41%; P < 0.004).
By Western blot analysis carried out with a monoclonal anti-GPC3 antibody we generated, the GPC3 protein was found to be overexpressed in 6 hepatoma cell lines, HepG2, Hep3B, HT17, HuH6, HuH7 and PLC/PRF/5, as well as 22 tumors (42.3%).
It is a novel tumor marker for human HCC: GPC3 protein was present in sera from 40-50% of HCC patients, but was not detected in sera from patients with liver cirrhosis or chronic hepatitis, or in sera from healthy individuals. alpha-Fetoprotein (AFP) and PIVKA-II (protein induced by vitamin K absence or antagonist-II), are well known major tumor markers for HCC.
To investigate the expression and clinical significance of DEK, cyclin D1, insulin-like growth factor II (IGF-II), glypican 3 (GPC3), ribosomal phosphoprotein 0 (rpP0) mRNA in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and its paraneoplastic tissues.
We report here that GPC3 stimulates the in vitro and in vivo growth of hepatocellular carcinoma cells by increasing autocrine/paracrine canonical Wnt signaling.
The different expression patterns of GPC3 in HCC and ICC suggested that it might play a different role in theses tumors and could serve as a biomarker for differential diagnosis of HCC and ICC.
The effector cells stimulated with DCs that were transfected with pEF-hGPC3 plasmid could effectively lyse GPC3 expressing HepG2 cells, which suggested that those genetically engineered DCs have the potential to serve as novel vaccine for HCC.
A second experiment conducted to compare macrophage infiltration between the xenograft tissues of a GPC3-transfected HCC cell line and its parent GPC3-nonexpressing cell line revealed that the increase in macrophages was stimulated by membrane expression of GPC3.