Activating mechanism of transcriptor NF-kappaB regulated by hepatitis B virus X protein in hepatocellular carcinoma

AIM:To investigate the mechanism and significance of NF-κB activation regulated by hepatitis B virus X protein (HBx) in hepatitis B virus (HBV)-associated hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).METHODS:The expression levels of HBx, p65,IκB-α and ubiquitin were detected by immunohistochemistry in HCC tissue microarrays (TMA) respectively, and IκB-α was detected by Western blot in HCC and corresponding liver tissues.RESULTS: The percentage of informative TMA samples was 98.8% in 186 cases with a total of 367 samples. Compared with corresponding liver tissues (60.0%),the HBx expression was obviously decreased in HBV-associated HCC (47.9%,u=2.24,P<0.05).On the contrary, the expressions of p65 (20.6% vs45.3%, u=4.85, P<0.01) and ubiquitin (8.9% vs 59.0%,u=9.68,P<0.01) were notably elevated in HCC.In addition, IκB-α had a tendency to go up. Importantly, positive relativity was observed between HBx and p65 (X^2=10.26,P<0.01), p65 and IκB-α (x^2=16.86,P<0.01), IκB-α and ubiquitin (x^2=8.90, P<0.01) in HCC, respectively.CONCLUSION:Both active and non-active forms of NF-κB are increased in HBV-associated HCC. Variant HBx is the major cause of the enhancement of NF-κB activity. The activation always proceeds in nucleus and the proteasome complexes play an important role in the activation.