Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Aug 28, 2022; 28(32): 4600-4619
Published online Aug 28, 2022. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v28.i32.4600
Sirolimus increases the anti-cancer effect of Huai Er by regulating hypoxia inducible factor-1α-mediated glycolysis in hepatocellular carcinoma
Lin Zhou, Yang Zhao, Li-Chao Pan, Jing Wang, Xian-Jie Shi, Guo-Sheng Du, Qiang He
Lin Zhou, Yang Zhao, Jing Wang, Qiang He, Department of Hepatobiliary and Pancreaticosplenic Surgery, Beijing ChaoYang Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing 100020, China
Li-Chao Pan, Xian-Jie Shi, Guo-Sheng Du, Faculty of Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary Surgery, Chinese PLA General Hospital, Beijing 100853, China
Author contributions: Zhou L, Zhao Y, and Pan LC contributed equally to this work; Zhou L, Shi XJ, and He Q contributed to conception and design; Du GS, Shi XJ, and He Q contributed to administrative support; He Q and Du GS contributed to provision of study materials; Zhou L, Pan LC, and Wang J contributed to experimental manipulation; Zhao Y, Wang J, and Zhou L contributed to collection and assembly of data; Wang J and Zhao Y contributed to data analysis and interpretation; all authors contributed to manuscript writing and final approval.
Supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Capital Medical University, No. PYZ20014 and No. PYZ21074.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, No. 2021-1-19-3; and PLA General Hospital, No. S2108-013-01.
Informed consent statement: All study participants, or their legal guardians, provided written informed consent for personal and medical data collection prior to study enrolment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Data sharing statement: The data used and analysed in this study are included in the article or are available from the corresponding and first authors upon reasonable request.
ARRIVE guidelines statement: The authors have read the ARRIVE guidelines, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the ARRIVE guidelines.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that 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: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Guo-Sheng Du, MD, Professor, Faculty of Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary Surgery, Chinese PLA General Hospital, No. 28 Fuxing Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100853, China. duguosheng309@126.com
Received: November 10, 2021
Peer-review started: November 10, 2021
First decision: January 9, 2022
Revised: January 11, 2022
Accepted: July 16, 2022
Article in press: July 16, 2022
Published online: August 28, 2022
Processing time: 289 Days and 0.8 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Hypoxia-mediated glycolysis is associated with poorly differentiated hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and a poor prognosis. Hypoxia inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α), induced by hypoxia, promotes the growth of HepG2 and Huh7 cells and weakens the anti-cancer effect of sirolimus (SRL) and Huai Er. SRL increased the anti-cancer effect of Huai Er, which reduced the promotion of hypoxia-induced HIF-1α on the Warburg effect by inhibiting the PI3K/Akt/mammalian target of rapamycin-HIF-1α and HIF-1α-phosphatase and tensin homolog deleted on chromosome ten signalling pathways in HCC.