Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2021. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Oncol. Jun 15, 2021; 13(6): 509-535
Published online Jun 15, 2021. doi: 10.4251/wjgo.v13.i6.509
Application of the woodchuck animal model for the treatment of hepatitis B virus-induced liver cancer
Manasa Suresh, Stephan Menne
Manasa Suresh, Stephan Menne, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC 20057, United States
Author contributions: Suresh M and Menne S wrote the manuscript. All authors have read and approve the final manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Manasa Suresh declares no conflict of interest for this article. Stephan Menne serves occasionally as a paid scientific consultant to Northeastern Wildlife, Inc. (Harris, ID), the only commercial source for woodchucks within the United States.
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: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Stephan Menne, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Georgetown University Medical Center, 3rd Floor, Medical-Dental Building, 3900 Reservoir Road, Washington, DC 20057, United States. stephan.menne@georgetown.edu
Received: February 21, 2021
Peer-review started: February 21, 2021
First decision: April 19, 2021
Revised: May 2, 2021
Accepted: May 15, 2021
Article in press: May 15, 2021
Published online: June 15, 2021
Processing time: 105 Days and 14.4 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Hepatitis B virus-induced liver tumors are hard to treat with currently available interventions and the prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in patients remains still poor. Immunocompetent woodchucks are a useful animal model for human HCC, because multiple tumors at different stages develop spontaneously and secondary to viral infection. This similarity to human hepatocarcinogenesis and the animal’s vascular architecture allowing catheterization with human-sized products have increased the preclinical use of this model to improve existing imaging (ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging, and positron-emission tomography) and ablation techniques (embolization and radiotherapy) and to evaluate interventions (chemo, gene, and immune therapy) intended to treat human HCC.