| Budget Amount *help |
¥1,700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,700,000)
Fiscal Year 1994: ¥700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000)
Fiscal Year 1993: ¥1,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000)
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| Research Abstract |
The hepatic transcription of human albumin and alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) genes is controlled by a complex set of regulatory elements, and that an AT-rich core sequence (AT motif) is essential as a cis-acting element for the hepatic transcription. Homologous proteins hepatocyte nuclear factor-1 (HNF-1) , variant HNF-1 (vHNF-1) , and AT motif-binding factor 1 (ATBF1) bind to the AT motif. To clarify the role of these three different trans-acting factors, we examined the mRNA and the expression ratio of the HNF-1/vHNF-1 mRNA in various liver tissues. Our competitive reverse transcriptional polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) method demonstrated that this ratio is linked to their histological differentiation, and that it is higher in well-differentiated hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) than in poorly-differentiated and undifferentiated types ; non-neoplastic liver tissues, however, have a low expression ratio of HNF-1/vHNF-1 mRNA.This study indicates that the importance of the HNF-1/vHNF-1 mRNA ratio in determining differentiation of hepatocytic neoplasms and suggests that measuring the ratio would be a useful diagnostic method. Recently, medical electronics have been developed and we must diagnose liver disease by a tiny tissues obtained from echoguided needle biopsy, however a small sized well-differentiated hepatocellular carcinoma is difficult to diagnose differentially from non-neoplastic liver tissues only by histological features. Our competitive RT-PCR method mesuring the ratio is steady and easy to obtain reliable data, using frozen tiny liver tissues, and this, in addition to histological features, must be contributing to the differential diagnosis of well-differentiated HCC from non-neoplastic lesions. We believe that the present work is highly valuable for a medical practice as well as medical science.
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