As my title suggests, it's one big irony considering the fact that hepatoma or hepatocellular carcinoma which involves transformation of hepatocytes is a consequence of viral hepatitis. Liver cancer has a high occurance amongst Asians. In recent days, anti-cancer viral therapy offers a great promise in the fight against cancer, which is why I was wondering if we could use an attenuated hepatitis virus to infect and kill the hepatoma cells. The Hepatitis B virus for instance targets hepatocytes. My suggestion was inspired by this experiment on a rat hepatoma cell-line, whereby scientists demonstrated the propagation of the human Heptitis B virus in vitro (Shih et al, 1989).
Citations
Shih CH, Li LS, Roychoudhury S, Ho MH. In vitro propagation of human hepatitis B virus in a rat hepatoma cell line. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1989 Aug;86(16):6323-7.
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