Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jan 14, 2016; 22(2): 823-832
Published online Jan 14, 2016. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i2.823
Targeting Wnt/β-catenin pathway in hepatocellular carcinoma treatment
Valery Vilchez, Lilia Turcios, Francesc Marti, Roberto Gedaly
Valery Vilchez, Lilia Turcios, Francesc Marti, Roberto Gedaly, Department of Surgery, Division of Transplantation, College of Medicine, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40536-0284, United States
Author contributions: Vilchez V, Turcios L, Marti F and Gedaly R contributed equally in developing the concept, writing and correcting this manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Authors declare no conflict of interest for this article.
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: Roberto Gedaly, MD, Department of Surgery, Division of Transplantation, College of Medicine, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40536-0284, United States. rgeda2@uky.edu
Telephone: +1-859-3234661 Fax: +1-859-2573644
Received: October 27, 2015
Peer-review started: October 31, 2015
First decision: November 13, 2015
Revised: December 5, 2015
Accepted: December 19, 2015
Article in press: December 21, 2015
Published online: January 14, 2016
Core Tip

Core tip: Several signaling pathways have been described to be deregulated in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). There are limited treatment options currently available in advanced liver cancer. Wnt/β-catenin pathway is frequently upregulated and has emerged as an alternative target in HCC. Our group has studied the role of β-catenin inhibition alone and in combination in HCC treatment. In this review we summarized the existing literature on the importance of Wnt/β-catenin pathway on hepatocarcinogenesis, tumor progression, relationship with liver stem cells and cancer therapeutics.