Animal Models of Hepatocellular Carcinoma Prevention

Abstract

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a deadly disease and therapeutic efficacy in advanced HCC is limited. Since progression of chronic liver disease to HCC involves a long latency period of a few decades, a significant window of therapeutic opportunities exists for prevention of HCC and improve patient prognosis. Nonetheless, there has been no clinical advancement in instituting HCC chemopreventive strategies. Some of the major challenges are heterogenous genetic aberrations of HCC, significant modulation of tumor microenvironment and incomplete understanding of HCC tumorigenesis. To this end, animal models of HCC are valuable tools to evaluate biology of tumor initiation and progression with specific insight into molecular and genetic mechanisms involved. In this review, we describe various animal models of HCC that facilitate effective ways to study therapeutic prevention strategies that have translational potential to be evaluated in a clinical context.

Keywords: animal models; hepatocellular carcinoma; prevention.

Figure 1

Translational aspects of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) prevention animal models. Various fatty liver induction, immunogenic, hepato-carcinogenic, hepato-toxic methods are used in rodents to model human hierarchical progression of liver injury to HCC. NAFLD, Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease; NASH, non-alcoholic steatohepatitis; DEN, dimethylnitrosamine; CCl₄, carbon tetrachloride; TAA, thioacetamide; BDL, bile duct ligation; HBV, hepatitis B virus; HCV, hepatitis C virus.