Original contributionsHigh-throughput tissue microarray analysis of c-myc activation in chronic liver diseases and hepatocellular carcinoma☆
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Patients and specimens
A total of 284 patients with primary HCC resected between 1986 and 1999 at the University of Hong Kong, Queen Mary Hospital were selected and studied. Selection was based on the availability of the paraffin blocks and whether there was adequate thickness of the tissues in the paraffin blocks for the tissue microarray study. A total of 337 HCC cases were resected during the study period, and the 284 patients included in the study represented 84% of the total number of patients who underwent
Dual-color FISH on tissue microarrays
High-throughput screening of c-myc amplification was performed by applying dual-color FISH on the tissue microarrays (Fig 2). A total of 246 samples (53.7%), consisting of 181 HCCs and 65 noncancerous livers, were successfully analyzed by dual-color FISH on the tissue microarrays.
For the HCCs, c-myc amplification with more than 2 copies of c-myc signals was detected in 83 of the 181 evaluable HCCs. Of these 83 cases, 40 had 3 to 5 copies of c-myc and 43 had more than 5 copies of c-myc (Fig 1).
Discussion
The present study evaluated the activation of c-myc in human hepatocarcinogenesis. We found that despite the absence of c-myc amplification, there was overexpression of c-myc in chronic hepatitis and cirrhosis as compared with HCCs and normal livers. In contrast, despite frequent amplification of c-myc in HCCs, c-myc expression in HCCs was significantly reduced as compared with livers with chronic hepatitis and cirrhosis. In other words, there was a discrepancy between c-myc amplification and
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Supported by a grant from the Hong Kong Research Grant Council (Project HKU 7342/00M).