Function of myeloid cell leukaemia-1 and its regulative relations with hepatocellular carcinoma

Abstract

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains a challenging disease with a high recurrence rate after surgery and there is an imminent need to identify new treatments. Currently, adjuvant therapy like chemotherapeutics arises to counteract the malignant trait escaping from apoptosis of tumors induced by overexpressed anti-apoptotic factors in HCC. Myeloid cell leukaemia-1 (Mcl-1) as an anti-apoptotic member of Bcl-2 is highly expressed in diverse human cancers, which contributes to cancer cell survival and the resistance to diverse chemotherapeutic agents. It is confirmed that Mcl-1 protein expression is quite enhanced in human HCC tissue compared to adjacent non-tumor tissue. Correspondingly, forced Mcl-1 down-regulation leads to prominent apoptosis of HCC cells and a sensitization towards chemotherapeutic drug-induced apoptosis, which indicates Mcl-1 is indeed a crucial regulatory factor of HCC. Hence, this review highlights the function of Mcl-1 on HCC progression, how it is regulated in HCC and the recent anti-hepatoma drug research and development down-regulation of Mcl-1 or targeting on Mcl-1. Meanwhile, the authors discuss Mcl-1 as an essential regulatory factor in HCC can be designed as target for drugs to improve the survival of HCC patients.

Keywords

Myeloid cell leukaemia-1 / apoptosis / hepatocellular carcinoma / target

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