Primary HCC is the fifth most common cancer in the world and the third most common cause of cancer mortality. The major etiological factors leading to HCC are the infection of hepatitis B and C viruses (HBV and HCV), as well as consumption of aflatoxin B1 contaminated foods. Since a gender bias exists in the HCC incidence and cancer regression the objective of this proposal is to investigate the role of the androgen receptor (AR) in the development and growth of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and explore the feasibility of targeting AR for treatment of HCC. Initially, the role of AR in HCC development and growth will be studied by comparing the carcinogen, N, N-diethylnitrosamine-induced HCC development and growth in wild type, general AR knockout (G-ARKO), and liver-specific AR knockout (L-ARKO) mice through determination of liver tumor incidence, rates of change in tumor foci number and size, and histochemical comparison of growth of preneoplastic foci, tumor cell proliferation and apoptosis indexes. These studies will be extended to HBV-mediated HCC development and growth through generation of G-ARKO and L- ARKO models of mice carrying HBV genome (HBV transgenic mice). The roles of AR in modulation of liver tumor growth deduced by ablation of AR in these mice models will be further confirmed by studying the effect of downregulating the expression of AR by AR-specific small interference RNA (AR-siRNA) on the growth of primary tumor cells of wild type and HBV transgenic mice in primary cultures and tumor xenografts in nude mice. The effect of AR-siRNA will be extended to the study of AR-expressing human hepatoma cells, both HBV-positive and HBV-negative, in tissue cultures and tumor xenografts. After having established that AR modulates the development and/or growth of liver tumor cells in these studies, the molecular mechanisms of how AR influences liver cancer incidence and progression will be studied via 4 different pathways. Public Relevance Statement: The success of this application will provide useful information pertaining to not only the role of AR in HCC development and growth, but also to the applicability of targeting AR for treatment of human primary HCC and eventually lead to more effective treatment regimens for this deadly neoplastic disease.
