Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. May 14, 2016; 22(18): 4538-4546
Published online May 14, 2016. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i18.4538
Expression of B7-H4 and hepatitis B virus X in hepatitis B virus-related hepatocellular carcinoma
Bo Hong, Yun Qian, Hong Zhang, Yi-Wen Sang, Lin-Fang Cheng, Qi Wang, Song Gao, Min Zheng, Hang-Ping Yao
Bo Hong, Department of Pathology, The Second Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou 310009, Zhejiang Province, China
Yun Qian, Yi-Wen Sang, Qi Wang, Song Gao, Department of Clinical Laboratory, The Second Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou 310009, Zhejiang Province, China
Hong Zhang, Department of Gastroenterology, The First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou 310003, Zhejiang Province, China
Lin-Fang Cheng, Min Zheng, Hang-Ping Yao, State Key Laboratory for Diagnosis and Treatment of Infectious Diseases, Collaborative Innovation Center for Diagnosis and Treatment of Infectious Diseases, The First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou 310003, Zhejiang Province, China
Author contributions: Hong B worked on the acquisition, analysis, and interpretation of data; Zhang H, Sang YW, and Wang Q carried out the cell experiments; Qian Y and Cheng LF carried out the IHC staining experiments; Zheng M and Yao HP designed the study and drafted the manuscript; all authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 81272679 and No. 81470851; Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China, No. LQ16H160005 and No. LY15H080002; the Medical Science and Technology Project of Zhejiang Province, No. 201337756; and the Educational Commission of Zhejiang Province of China, No. Y201328079. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by The Second Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine Institutional Review Board.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest related to the publication of this manuscript.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset available from the corresponding author at yaohangping@zju.edu.cn. Participants gave informed consent for data sharing. No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Dr. Hang-Ping Yao, Professor, State Key Laboratory for Diagnosis and Treatment of Infectious Diseases, Collaborative Innovation Center for Diagnosis and Treatment of Infectious Diseases, The First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, 79 Qingchun Road, Hangzhou 310003, Zhejiang Province, China. yaohangping@zju.edu.cn
Telephone: +86-571-87236580 Fax: +86-571-87236582
Received: January 14, 2016
Peer-review started: January 16, 2016
First decision: February 18, 2016
Revised: February 27, 2016
Accepted: March 18, 2016
Article in press: March 18, 2016
Published online: May 14, 2016
Core Tip

Core tip: Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a major public health problem, and HBV-related hepatocellular carcinoma (HBV-HCC) has an extremely poor prognosis due to the lack of effective treatments. B7-H4 is a newly characterized member of the B7 superfamily that is actively involved in regulating the pathogenesis of tumors. However, the intrahepatic expression of B7-H4 in HBV-HCC patients has not been described. In this study, we found that the higher expression of HBx and B7-H4 was correlated with tumor progression of HBV-HCC. Therefore, B7-H4 may be involved in facilitating HBV-related hepatocarcinogenesis.