Background: Different inflammatory states, e.g. chronic hepatitis B or C viral infection, have been shown to contribute to the development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). In patients with chronic liver disease the serum levels of interleukin 6 (IL-6) are elevated and increase even more when HCC develops. However, there is still not much known about the regulation of IL-6 signaling during hepatocarcinogenesis. Recently, we applied an integrative genomic and transcriptomic approach which revealed that loss of chromosome 8 p is associated with poor prognosis. In addition, we showed that the two chromosome 8 p genes SORBS3 and SH2D4A are functional tumor suppressor genes in vitro and in vivo. The goal of this study is to dissect the molecular mechanisms of SORBS3 and SH2D4A mediated tumor suppression.
