Vivek N. Iyer, Karen L. Swanson, Rodrigo Cartin‐Ceba, Ross A. Dierkhising, Charles B. Rosen, Julie K. Heimbach, Russell H. Wiesner, Michael J. Krowka – 19 September 2012 – Hepatopulmonary syndrome (HPS) is a pulmonary vascular disorder occurring as a consequence of advanced liver disease, characterized by hypoxemia due to intrapulmonary vascular dilatations. HPS independently increases mortality, regardless of the cause or severity of liver disease. Liver transplantation (LT) improves survival in HPS.

Courtney Wilkins, Jessica Woodward, Daryl T.‐Y. Lau, Amy Barnes, Michael Joyce, Nicola McFarlane, Jane A. McKeating, D. Lorne Tyrrell, Michael Gale – 19 September 2012 – Type 1 interferon (IFN) continues to be the foundation for the current standard of care combination therapy for chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, yet the component interferon‐stimulated genes (ISGs) that mediate the antiviral actions of IFN are not fully defined.

Yan Yan, Yue‐Chen Luo, Hai‐Ying Wan, Jun Wang, Pei‐Pei Zhang, Min Liu, Xin Li, Shengping Li, Hua Tang – 19 September 2012 – MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have been reported to be associated with the development of cancers. However, the function of miRNAs in human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains largely undefined. Here we found that overexpression of miR‐10a promoted the migration and invasion of QGY‐7703 and HepG2 cells in vitro but suppressed metastasis in vivo.

Dorothy Ngo‐Yin Fan, Felice Ho‐Ching Tsang, Aegean Hoi‐Kam Tam, Sandy Leung‐Kuen Au, Carmen Chak‐Lui Wong, Lai Wei, Joyce Man‐Fong Lee, Xianghuo He, Irene Oi‐Lin Ng, Chun‐Ming Wong – 18 September 2012 – Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a major liver malignancy. We previously demonstrated that deregulation of epigenetic regulators is a common event in human HCC.

Zhong‐Bin Deng, Xiaoying Zhuang, Songwen Ju, Xiaoyu Xiang, Jingyao Mu, Qilong Wang, Hong Jiang, Lifeng Zhang, Mitchell Kronenberg, Jun Yan, Donald Miller, Huang‐Ge Zhang – 18 September 2012 – The Wnt/β‐catenin pathway has been known to play a role in induction of immune tolerance, but its role in the induction and maintenance of natural killer T (NKT) cell anergy is unknown. We found that activation of the Wnt pathways in the liver microenvironment is important for induction of NKT cell anergy.

Norihisa Ichinohe, Naoki Tanimizu, Hidekazu Ooe, Yukio Nakamura, Toru Mizuguchi, Junko Kon, Koichi Hirata, Toshihiro Mitaka – 18 September 2012 – Oval cells and small hepatocytes (SHs) are known to be hepatic stem and progenitor cells. Although oval cells are believed to differentiate into mature hepatocytes (MHs) through SHs, the details of their differentiation process are not well understood. Furthermore, it is not certain whether the induced cells possess fully mature functions as MHs.

Kristin Wahl, Martin Siegemund, Frank Lehner, Florian Vondran, Andreas Nüssler, Florian Länger, Till Krech, Roland Kontermann, Michael P. Manns, Klaus Schulze‐Osthoff, Klaus Pfizenmaier, Heike Bantel – 18 September 2012 – As the result of an increasing incidence and a prevalent therapy resistance of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), there is a strong need for novel strategies to enhance treatment responses in HCC.

Kristin A. Anderson, Dongning Wang, Matthew D. Hirschey – 18 September 2012

Yasuji Arase, Mariko Kobayashi, Fumitaka Suzuki, Yoshiyuki Suzuki, Yusuke Kawamura, Norio Akuta, Masahiro Kobayashi, Hitomi Sezaki, Satoshi Saito, Tetsuya Hosaka, Kenji Ikeda, Hiromitsu Kumada, Tetsuro Kobayashi – 18 September 2012 – The aim of this retrospective cohort study was to assess the cumulative development incidence and predictive factors for malignancies after the termination of interferon (IFN) therapy in Japanese patients for hepatitis C virus (HCV). A total of 4,302 HCV‐positive patients treated with IFN were enrolled. The mean observation period was 8.1 years.

Kirsty Boyd, Barbara Kimbell, Scott Murray, John Iredale – 17 September 2012