Heparanase and hepatocellular carcinoma: Promoter or inhibitor?

Table 1 Studies examining the pro-metastatic role of heparanase in HCC

Studies	No.	Methods	Positive rate of HCC tissue	Correlation between heparanase expression and HCC progression
El-Assal et al[24], 2001	551	RT-PCR	47%	Significant positive correlation
Ikeguchi et al[26], 2002	502	QRT-PCR	< adjacent noncancerous tissue	No significant correlation
Ikeguchi et al[27], 2003	482	QRT-PCR	< adjacent noncancerous tissue	Significant negative correlation
Xiao et al[28], 2003	113	QRT-PCR,WB, ISH, IHC	> normal and cirrhosis tissue	Significant positive correlation
Chen et al[30], 2004	332	RT-PCR	48.5%, > adjacent tissue	Significant positive correlation
Liu et al[31], 2005	334	RT-PCR	48.5%, > paracancerous and normal tissue	Significant positive correlation
Chen et al[29], 2008	1205	IHC in TMAs	45.83%, > adjacent tumor tissue, cirrhosis, and normal liver tissue	Significant positive correlation

¹55 HCC tissue samples;

²Both HCC tissue samples and non-cancerous liver samples were obtained from the same patients;

³16 normal liver tissue samples, 14 liver cirrhosis tissue samples and 11 HCC tissue samples;

⁴HCC tissue samples and paracancerous tissue samples were obtained from 33 HCC patients; paracancerous tissues of 9 cases of benign liver tumor were used as normal controls;

⁵48 cases of adjacent HCC liver, 62 cases of cirrhosis, and 23 cases of normal liver tissues. HCC: Hepatocellular carcinoma; RT-PCR: Reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction; QRT-PCR: Real-time quantitative RT-PCR; WB: Western blotting; ISH: In situ hybridization; IHC: Immunohistochemistry; TMAs: Tissue microarrays.