RESUMO
BACKGROUND/AIMS: Recent studies have confirmed that iron overload is involved not only in liver carcinogenesis, but in its progression. Results in studies using liver cancer cell lines have suggested a relationship between transferrin receptor (TfR) expression and liver carcinogenesis, but TfR expression has not yet been analyzed in human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) tissues. METHODOLOGY: We immunohistochemically assessed the expression of TfR1 and TfR2 in tumor tissues and adjacent non-tumorous liver tissues from 41 HCC patients who underwent partial hepatectomy. We evaluated uptake of iron in hepatocytes and HCC cells using iron staining. RESULTS: The expression TfR was significantly higher in HCC samples than in adjacent non-tumor tissue (p < 0.001). TfR expression was significantly related to serum alpha-fetoprotein (p < 0.05) and des-gamma carboxy prothrombin (p < 0.05) concentrations. We also found iron deposition in non-tumor tissue from 25 patients, but in only two HCC samples, consistent with findings that hepatocellular iron uptake decreases with liver carcinogenesis. CONCLUSIONS: We investigated the expression of TfR1 and TfR2 in human HCC tissues by immunohistochemistry, the first report demonstrating TfR2 expression immunohistochemically in human HCC. These results suggest that TfR is expressed in response to iron deficiency during liver carcinogenesis.