Liver Cancer: Treatment Difficulties and the Application of Experimental Models

Abstract

Liver cancer is one of the most lethal forms of cancer globally. Liver cancer can be attributed to a number of causes, one of which is the hepatitis B or C virus. Other contributors include: excessive alcohol consumption, obesity, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, diabetes, smoking, and iron overload. There are different types of liver cancer, and the one most prevalent is hepatocellular carcinoma, which is the only type to be discussed in this paper. The signaling pathways YAP-Hippo, Wnt-β-catenin, and NF-κB promote liver cancer. This still interests researchers for therapy development. This paper investigates fat metabolizing receptor, PPARγ, in hepatocellular carcinoma development. Certain liver cancer promoting changes have been documented like histone acetylation, histone methylation, and DNA methylation changes. This paper integrates published work on these topics. The disease has both in vitro and in vivo model systems for studying advanced liver cancer and innovating therapeutics. Each has different strengths and targets different aspects of the disease. The paper ends with a review of the therapeutics that has been approved for treating hepatocellular carcinoma. Pirfenidone is one of these and should be highlighted, given its preclinical data is promising.

Keywords: Hepatocellular cancer, alcohol, liver cirrhosis, and animal models