Identification of β-glucosidase 1 as a biomarker and its high expression in hepatocellular carcinoma is associated with resistance to chemotherapy drugs

Abstract

Context and objective: Long-term prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients is challenging, and novel biomarkers are needed to predict patient risk and serve as potential therapeutic target.

Results: We found β-glucosidase 1 is significantly overexpressed and activated in primary HCC tissue and multiple HCC cell lines. β-Glucosidase 1 expression is associated with predicting prognosis of HCC patients under chemotherapy. Silencing β-glucosidase 1 inhibits growth and survival of HCC cells, with preferential inhibitory effects on high β-glucosidase 1-expressing cells. Combination of chemo drug with β-glucosidase 1 inhibitor sensitized HCC cells to chemotherapy.

Conclusion: Our data support β-glucosidase 1 as a HCC biomarker due to its prognosis significance.

• Biomarker
• hepatocellular carcinoma
• β-glucosidase
• targeted therapy

Declaration of interest

The authors report that they have no conflicts of interest. This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 81371683/H1819 and 11104317), Medical Technology Major Projects of Wuxi Hospital Center (YGZX1105 and YGZXM14044), and Clinical Medicine Project of Jiangsu Province (BL2014023).

Supplementary material available online

Supplementary Figures S1–S3