Meta-Analysis
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Oncol. Sep 15, 2022; 14(9): 1856-1873
Published online Sep 15, 2022. doi: 10.4251/wjgo.v14.i9.1856
Dissecting novel mechanisms of hepatitis B virus related hepatocellular carcinoma using meta-analysis of public data
Jihad Aljabban, Michael Rohr, Saad Syed, Eli Cohen, Naima Hashi, Sharjeel Syed, Kamal Khorfan, Hisham Aljabban, Vincent Borkowski, Michael Segal, Mohamed Mukhtar, Mohammed Mohammed, Emmanuel Boateng, Mary Nemer, Maryam Panahiazar, Dexter Hadley, Sajid Jalil, Khalid Mumtaz
Jihad Aljabban, Vincent Borkowski, Michael Segal, Mary Nemer, Department of Medicine, University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, Madison, WI 53792, United States
Michael Rohr, Department of Medicine, University of Central Florida College of Medicine, Orlando, FL 32827, United States
Saad Syed, Department of Medicine, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago, IL 60611, United States
Eli Cohen, Emmanuel Boateng, Department of Medicine, Vanderbilt Medical Center, Nashville, TN 37232, United States
Naima Hashi, Department of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN 55905, United States
Sharjeel Syed, Department of Medicine, University of Chicago Hospitals, Chicago, IL 60637, United States
Kamal Khorfan, Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, University of California San Francisco-Fresno, Fresno, CA 93701, United States
Hisham Aljabban, Department of Medicine, Barry University, Miami, FL 33161, United States
Mohamed Mukhtar, Department of Medicine, Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, Lansing, MI 49503, United States
Mohammed Mohammed, Department of Medicine, Windsor University School of Medicine, Frankfort, IL 60423, United States
Maryam Panahiazar, Department of Surgery, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, United States
Dexter Hadley, Department of Pathology, University of Central Florida College of Medicine, Orlando, FL 32827, United States
Sajid Jalil, Khalid Mumtaz, Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, OH 43210, United States
Author contributions: Aljabban J and Rohr M contributed to the conception or design of the work; Aljabban J, Rohr M, and Hadley D involved in the data collection; Aljabban J, Rohr M, Syed S, Cohen E, Hashi N, Syed S, Khorfan K, Aljabban H, and Mumtaz K drafted manuscript; Aljabban J, Rohr M, Syed S, Cohen E, Hashi N, Syed S, Khorfan K, Aljabban H, Boateng E, Nemer M, Panahiazar M, Hadley D, Jalil S, and Mumtaz K involved in the critical revision of manuscript; Aljabban J, Rohr M, Syed S, Cohen E, Hashi N, Syed S, Khorfan K, Aljabban H, Boateng E, Nemer M, Panahiazar M, Hadley D, Jalil S, and Mumtaz K contributed to the final edits and approval.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
PRISMA 2009 Checklist statement: The authors have read the PRISMA 2009 Checklist, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the PRISMA 2009 Checklist.
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 NonCommercial (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: Jihad Aljabban, MD, MSc, Academic Research, Doctor, Department of Medicine, University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, 600 Highland Avenue, Madison, WI 53792, United States. jaljabban@uwhealth.org
Received: January 20, 2022
Peer-review started: January 20, 2022
First decision: April 17, 2022
Revised: April 26, 2022
Accepted: August 7, 2022
Article in press: August 7, 2022
Published online: September 15, 2022
Processing time: 232 Days and 10.9 Hours
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a major cause of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) through several mechanisms including cirrhosis and direct oncogenic phenomena.

Research motivation

Studying HBV related HCC will offer novel insights to viral hepatic oncogenesis. It will also potentially lead to more directed therapy in HBV-related HCC.

Research objectives

Identify genetic changes and pathways that define HBV-related HCC. Identify novel therapeutic targets.

Research methods

Used our novel Search Tag Analyze Resource platform to mine liver biopsies from HBV-related HCC patients and used ingenuity pathway analysis to study the results of our meta-analysis.

Research results

Our meta-analysis highlighted several genes and pathways with oncogenic potential. Of note, we describe two potential novel mediators of oncogenesis in rab-like protein 6 (RABL6) and homeobox A10 (HOXA10).

Research conclusions

This meta-analysis describes possible roles of RABL6 and HOXA10 in the pathogenesis of HBV-related HCC. RABL6 and HOXA10 represent potential therapeutic targets and warrant further investigation.

Research perspectives

The next steps to our research is to validate RABL6 and HOXA10 relevance in HBV-related HCC using clinical samples and establish its mechanistic underpinnings in an animal model.