Editorial
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Oncol. May 15, 2025; 17(5): 104842
Published online May 15, 2025. doi: 10.4251/wjgo.v17.i5.104842
Up-regulated programmed cell death protein-1/its ligand 1 expression promotes metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease malignant progression
Min Xu, Tian-Tian Ruan, Hao Tang, Rong-Fei Fang, Wen-Li Sai, Qun Xie, Deng-Fu Yao, Min Yao
Min Xu, Tian-Tian Ruan, Hao Tang, Wen-Li Sai, Deng-Fu Yao, Min Yao, Department of Immunology, Medical School of Nantong University and Research Center of Clinical Medicine, Affiliated Hospital of Nantong University, Nantong 226001, Jiangsu Province, China
Rong-Fei Fang, Department of Gastroenterology, Affiliated Hospital of Nantong University, Nantong 226001, Jiangsu Province, China
Qun Xie, Department of Infectious Diseases, Nantong Haian People’s Hospital, Haian 226600, Jiangsu Province, China
Co-first authors: Min Xu and Tian-Tian Ruan.
Co-corresponding authors: Min Yao and Deng-Fu Yao.
Author contributions: Xu M, Ruan TT and Tang H contributed equally to this work and wrote draft of the paper; Fang RF, Sai WL and Xie Q performed literature search for the manuscript; Yao M and Yao DF revised the manuscript and edited all drafts of the paper; All authors approved the final version of the manuscript.
Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 81673241 and No. 32470985.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (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: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Deng-Fu Yao, MD, Doctor, Department of Immunology, Medical School of Nantong University and Research Center of Clinical Medicine, Affiliated Hospital of Nantong University, No. 20 West Temple Road, Nantong 226001, Jiangsu Province, China. yaodf@ahnmc.com
Received: January 6, 2025
Revised: March 20, 2025
Accepted: April 1, 2025
Published online: May 15, 2025
Processing time: 131 Days and 23.8 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is associated with hepatitis virus (hepatitis B virus or hepatitis C virus) infection and increasing metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic/fatty liver disease (MASLD/MAFLD). Virus vaccines and antiviral therapy are considered key prevention and anti-viral treatments for HCC. Recently, interesting observation was that MASLD malignant progression was associated with higher programmed cell death protein-1/its ligand 1 (PD-1/PD-L1) expression. Therefore, inhibiting PD-1/PD-L1 except of HCC therapy could be a promising target to prevent or delay the malignant transformation of hepatocytes.