Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. May 14, 2015; 21(18): 5465-5472
Published online May 14, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i18.5465
Phycocyanobilin accelerates liver regeneration and reduces mortality rate in carbon tetrachloride-induced liver injury mice
Jie Liu, Qing-Yu Zhang, Li-Ming Yu, Bin Liu, Ming-Yi Li, Run-Zhi Zhu
Jie Liu, Qing-Yu Zhang, Bin Liu, Ming-Yi Li, Run-Zhi Zhu, Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery, Affiliated Hospital of Guangdong Medical College, Zhanjiang 524001, Guangdong Province, China
Li-Ming Yu, Department of Maxillofacial Surgery, Affiliated Hospital of Guangdong Medical College, Zhanjiang 524001, Guangdong Province, China
Author contributions: Liu J and Zhang QY contributed equally to this work; Liu J and Zhang QY performed the majority of experiments; Liu B and Yu LM participated in the sample collection of mice; Zhu RZ designed the experiments and guided their implementation; and Li MY provided the funding for supporting this research.
Supported by Zhanjiang Key Laboratory of Hepatobiliary Diseases, No. 2013A402-4; The Medical Research Funding of Affiliated Hospital of Guangdong Medical College, No. QK1319; and The Medical Research Funding of Guangdong Province, No. B2014306, China.
Ethics approval: The protocol of this study was approved by the Committee on the Ethics of Animal Experiments of Guangdong Medical College (Permit Number: SYXK 2008-0007).
Institutional animal care and use committee: All procedures involving animals were reviewed and approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the Guangdong Medical College (IACUC protocol number: AP3324).
Conflict-of-interest: Zhu RZ has received research funding from Guangdong Medical College, Li MY has received research funding from Zhanjiang Science and Technology Bureau; Liu J has received research funding from public health and family planning council of Guangdong Province and Affiliated Hospital of Guangdong Medical College respectively; Liu J, Zhang QY, Yu LM, Liu B, Li MY and Zhu R are employees of Affiliated Hospital of Guangdong Medical College; all authors declare that there is no conflict of interest in this work.
Data sharing: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Run-Zhi Zhu, PhD, Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery, Affiliated Hospital of Guangdong Medical College, South NO. 57 Renmin Dadao, Zhanjiang 524001, Guangdong Province, China. hepatolab@163.com
Telephone: +86-759-2387596 Fax: +86-759-2387596
Received: November 7, 2014
Peer-review started: November 10, 2014
First decision: December 11, 2014
Revised: December 29, 2014
Accepted: March 12, 2015
Article in press: March 12, 2015
Published online: May 14, 2015
Processing time: 192 Days and 5.2 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Our research confirmed that phycocyanobilin (PCB) plays a hepatoprotective role on carbon tetrachloride-induced acute liver injury mice. It was shown that PCB has a strongly anti-inflammatory effect when the liver suffered oxidative damage. The results showed that PCB could accelerate liver regeneration, reduce apoptosis and necrosis of the hepatocytes by regulating the expression of hepatocyte growth factor, transforming growth factor (TGF)-α, TGF-β, tumor necrosis factor-α and interleukin-6. In addition, PCB could significantly improve the survival probability of the acute liver injury mice.