Expressions of Carbohydrate Response Element Binding Protein and Glucose Transporters in Liver Cancer and Clinical Significance

Carbohydrate response element binding protein (ChREBP) is a glucose-sensing transcription factor that mediates the induction of glycolytic and lipogenic genes in response to glucose. We investigated the expression patterns of ChREBP and glucose transporters (GLUTs) in human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and their association with HCC progression. ChREBP, GLUT2 and GLUT1 immunohistochemistry were performed on liver tissue array containing normal liver tissue, HCC adjacent tissue and cancer tissue of different HCC stages. The effect of HCC malignancy on protein expression was analyzed with one-way ANOVA. The correlations between protein expressions were analyzed with Pearson Correlation test. We found that ChREBP protein expression tended to be positively correlated to liver malignancy. GLUT2 protein expression was significantly reduced in human HCC as compared to normal liver tissue and its expression in HCC was inversely associated to malignancy ( p