Abstract
BACKGROUND: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the second most common cause of cancer death worldwide and the search for clinically useful biomarkers is ongoing. Neighbor of Punc E11 (NOPE) is an established biomarker of murine HCC that remains undetectable in normal liver and at preneoplastic stages. OBJECTIVE: The aim of our study was to evaluate the presence of NOPE in human HCC. METHODS: Histologically confirmed HCC and corresponding non-tumor liver samples from 20 patients were analyzed for expression of NOPE using qRT-PCR and mRNA-in-situ technology in a conserved tissue context. RESULTS: In our cohort, 30% of HCC samples were expressing NOPE which proved particularly useful in non-cirrhotic HCC samples with up to 155-fold higher expression than in adult liver. Using mRNA-in-situ technology, NOPE was clearly identified within epithelial tumor cells of NOPE positive human HCCs. In our analyzed cohort, the combination of AFP with NOPE did not reach more than 40% sensitivity while GPC-3 and NOPE were complementary to each other reaching a combined sensitivity of 85.7%. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first characterization of NOPE as a potential biomarker for human HCC. Our results underline the value of NOPE as a complementing biomarker for human HCC.