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Researchers link liver cancer to male hormone receptors

Researchers from Chang Gung Memorial Hospital have found that male hormone receptors play a role in influencing the growth of liver cancer cells, which could explain why liver cancer, one of the major causes of death in Taiwan, occurs in males five to seven times more often than in females.

The breakthrough, which could lead to ways to inhibit cancer cell growth in the liver, will be published as the editor’s pick in this month’s edition of Gastroenterology, a first-tier journal in the field of gastrointestinal disease.

Hsu Cheng-lung (徐正龍), attending physician at the Chang Gung Memorial Hospital’s Department of Internal Medicine, worked with the University of Rochester in New York on a gene knockout experiment, which yielded results that proved the importance of male hormone receptors and its signaling pathway on the growth of liver cancer cells.

The team injected mice with N-diethylnitrosamine, a substance that prompts liver cancer in mice. They found mice that did not undergo gene knockout developed liver cancer earlier — at just 24 weeks — followed by mice with male hormone receptors knocked out only in the liver.

“Mice that had receptors knocked out in their entire bodies were the latest to develop cancer and had the lowest rates among the three groups,” Hsu said.

Hsu found “mice with male hormone receptors intact had a higher rate of tumor growth and lower occurrence of cell [death] than mice that had the receptors knocked out,” he said.

“We found that if we stimulated the human cancer cell lines with male hormones, cell growth was expedited,” Hsu said. “But when we injected [derivative of ginger extracts] we found that growth of cancer cells in mice were inhibited.”

Yeh Chau-ting (葉昭廷), professor of medicine at Chang Gung University, said that the breakthrough is a step toward their two goals — preventing cancer recurrence and curing patients in the final stages of liver cancer.


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