Accumulation of Chromosomal Alterations Can Predict the Disease Aggressiveness and the Poor Prognosis in Hepatocellular Carcinoma

It is well known that prognosis of hepatoceller carcinoma (HCC) is not favorite compared to other types of human cancers and a bunch of genetic and epigenetic alterations are involved during development of this tumor. We present here about one HCC patient with chronic hepatitis B and polymyositis/dermatomyositis. Initially, he had a surgical resection for treatment of HCC because tumor was solitary and curable for it's size, but showed an aggressive disease course thereafter. We analyzed the chromosomal alterations of this HCC tissue using polymerase chain reaction-based methods and found several chromosomal alterations including losses on l6q, 17p, which were reportedly associated wide poor prognosis of this disease. He died one year after surgical treatment because of intrahepatic and lymphnode recurrence in spite of various treatments for HCC. This result suggested that accumulation of chromosomal alterations could be a useful predictor for disease aggressiveness and poor prognosis after curative treatment of HCC