Deregulated expression of Notch receptors in human hepatocellular carcinoma

Aberrant expression of Notch3 predicts poor survival for hepatocellular carcinomas

“…Next, by an immunohistochemistry method, we obeserved a high frequency (73.7%) of Notch3 expression in HCC, similiar to the findings of Gramantieri's study in which Notch3 was not expressed in normal liver tissue, and displayed abnormal accumulation in 78% of HCC tissue (5). However, Gramantieri's and our data were not consistent with those of Gao et al's previous study in which cytoplasmic Notch3 expression showed no difference between HCC and adjacent non-cancerous liver samples (6).…”

“…Several previous studies investigated the expression of Notch3 in HCC, however, the results were inconsistent (5,6). Especially, the clinicopathological and prognostic significance of Notch3 in HCC has seldom been investigated.…”

Hepatitis B virus X protein activates Notch signaling by its effects on Notch1 and Notch4 in human hepatocellular carcinoma

“…All stained sections were evaluated by two independent investigators who were blinded to the groups. The scoring was based on intensity and the extent of the staining (22). The immunoreactive score of each section was calculated by sum of these two parameters and graded as negative (I), weak (II), moderate (III) and strong (IV).…”

“…Semi-qualitative PCR was performed using human primer sequences for Notch1-4 and for HBx as in our previous reports (20,22). β-actin was used as a housekeeping gene.…”

Notch-4 contributes to the metastasis of salivary adenoid cystic carcinoma

“…Moreover, a previous study showed that Notch-4 expression was absent or significantly decreased in renal cell carcinoma tissues compared to the adjacent non-neoplastic tissues (28). Some researchers found that Notch-4 protein was expressed in both cytoplasm and nucleus of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cells, and compared to the adjacent non-tumor tissue samples, its expression was upregulated in HCC tissue samples (29). By immunohistochemistry assay, we found that Notch-4 was frequently expressed in most of the tissues with metastasis and recurrence, and its expression was significantly higher in the SACC tissues with metastasis and recurrence compared to that of the non-metastatic control tissues.…”