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Liver cancer

SALL4—a cancer marker and target

Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology volume 10, page 426 (2013)Cite this article

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Zinc finger protein SALL4 is both a marker for an aggressive subtype of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and a potential target for its treatment, new findings show. “SALL4 could become an ideal cancer therapy target ... since it is not expressed in most adult normal tissues, but is reactivated in a subset of cancer patients,” says Li Chai, one of the lead investigators.

SALL4 is expressed in human foetal liver, but not in the healthy adult liver. However, SALL4 is re-expressed in a number of cancers, including acute myeloid leukaemia and some liver, lung, ovarian, endometrial and breast cancers. Previous work by Chai's group pointed to a role for this protein in tumorigenesis, and indicated that targeting SALL4 might have anticancer effects. “We hope in the near future we can use SALL4 expression as a targetable marker in cancer patients,” says Chai. The investigators used HCC as a model to test this hypothesis.

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

  1. Yong, K. J. et al. Oncofetal gene SALL4 in aggressive hepatocellular carcinoma. N. Engl. J. Med. 368, 2266–2276 (2013)

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  1. Bryony Jones
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Jones, B. SALL4—a cancer marker and target. Nat Rev Clin Oncol 10, 426 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrclinonc.2013.112

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