Telomere deregulation at the early stage of alcohol-associated hepatocarcinogenesis Expression of the Ki67 proliferative marker was not significantly different between alcohol-associated cirrhotic and non-cirrhotic liver tissues deriving from patients with HCC. There

was no significant difference in TRF length, TA, hTERT and hTR expression between the two sample categories (Figure 1A). Salubrinal supplier Western-blot analysis of hTERT expression confirmed the qRTPCR results (Figure 2B). Shelterin, POT1 (p = 0.005) and RAP1 (p = 0.006) were demonstrated to be significantly overexpressed in alcohol-associated cirrhotic tissues, whereas other shelterins were found to be underexpressed, with TRF1-interacting nuclear protein 2 gene (TIN2) showing a significant difference (Table 2). All non-shelterin telomere factors, except TANK2 and Pinx1, contained a transcriptional pattern that resembled that in HCV cirrhotic samples. Accordingly, all telomere factors except the TANK2 non-shelterin were overexpressed in cirrhotic alcohol-exposed liver with significant differences demonstrated for HMRE11A, HMRE11B, Ku70, Ku80, RAD50, TANK1, and Pinx1 (Table 2, Figure 1C). Western-blot analyses confirmed the qRTPCR results for POT1, TRF2, HMR11A/B, and KU80 (Figure 2C and D). These results

suggested that at the telomere level, the main changes accompanying the development of alcohol-associated cirrhosis and fibrosis predominantly involve the overexpression of POT1, RAP1, HMRE11A, HMRE11B, Ku70, Ku80, RAD50,

TANK1, and Pinx1 telomere factors. Taken together, these results indicate that the development of HBV-, HCV-, and alcohol-related cirrhosis 5-Fluoracil datasheet rely on clearly distinct telomere perturbations and suggests that these distinct carcinogens possess specific effects on telomere homeostasis. Consequently, 3 kinds of cirrhotic tissues displayed significant differences in the expression of telomere factors (Figure 1, Additional file 3: Table S3). Telomere deregulation at the late stage of HBV-associated hepatocarcinogenesis Having demonstrated the cause-specific changes in telomere factors’ expression between cirrhotic and non-cirrhotic livers, i.e. during early hepatocarcinogenesis, we next sought to investigate whether these differences persist at the late stages Epothilone B (EPO906, Patupilone) of HCC development. To this end we compared telomere deregulations between cirrhotic and tumoral samples deriving from patients with HCC. We first compared the 10 HBV-associated HCC samples with their 8 cirrhotic peritumoral samples. Expression of the Ki67 proliferative marker was significantly increased in HBV-associated HCC, as compared with HBV-associated cirrhosis (p = 0.002, Mann–Whitney test). The TRF length was significantly shorter in tumor samples than in cirrhotic samples (p = 0.05, Mann–Whitney test) whereas the levels of TA and hTERT expression were significantly higher in HBV positive HCC (p = 0.017 for hTERT and p = 0.