Article Text
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Editor,—The recent paper by Sirivatanauksornet al (OpenUrlCrossRefPubMedWeb of Science) focused once again on the unresolved question as to whether (i) hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in human liver develops from a single clone or from multiple parallel clones and (ii) among multiple tumour nodules present in many patients, the smaller lesions represent intrahepatic metastases or “de novo” cancers. The authors correctly acknowledge that “information on the clonal origin of tumours will influence management strategies for prevention of recurrence after operation”. They used arbitrarily primed polymerase chain reaction (AP-PCR)1 to compare the DNA fingerprint of HCCs and regenerative nodules (RNs) removed from 13 cirrhotic explant livers. They found considerable genomic heterogeneity in 54 HCCs and 31 RNs that were microdissected. No two nodules (either RNs or HCCs) …