Here we report an analysis of the role of HGF/c-Met related β-catenin activation and CTNNB1 mutation activation of β-catenin in a large cohort of 84 patients with hepatoblastoma.

This characterisation of β-catenin activation by the c-Met pathway may have clinical relevance because several HGF/c-Met small molecule inhibitors are now in early phase clinical trials. Materials and methods Patients and SIOPEL HB clinical trials SIOPEL Liver tumor clinical trials are international, prospective, clinical https://www.selleckchem.com/products/brigatinib-ap26113.html trials run under the auspices of the SIOP Liver Tumor Strategy Group (SIOPEL). Our cohort comprises patients prospectively enrolled into the SIOPEL 3 clinical trial, a randomised study which opened in March 1998, designed to evaluate the effectiveness of preoperative chemotherapy for standard risk (SR) HB with either cisplatin (CDDP) alone or in combination with www.selleckchem.com/products/ch5424802.html doxorubicin (PLADO). A detailed description of the SR patient cohort, its clinical features, staging and outcome has previously been reported [33]. SIOPEL 3 patients with high risk (HR) HB were all treated preoperatively with SUPERPLADO, a three-drug combination of Cisplatin, Doxorubicin and Carboplatin and the results have been reported [34]. All patients were recruited to the SIOPEL 3 clinical trial

with appropriate informed consent. This specific study was reviewed and approved by the New Zealand Health Research Council Multi-regional ethics committee (MREC). Tumor samples In this study we have accessed a representative cohort

of 84 HB patients with clinical, histologic and survival data available for most samples. Both diagnostic and post-chemotherapy samples were available for fourteen patients bringing the total number of samples analysed to 98. In the case of diagnostic samples there was generally just a single formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tumor block available containing the entire biopsy material on which the diagnosis was made. For each post-chemotherapy not case, the most representative FFPE block was identified by examination of slides stained with haematoxylin and eosin (H+E). From the H+E slides, representative tumor and adjacent Selleckchem VX-689 normal tissue areas were selected by a pathologist (C.M.) for subsequent tissue array construction. Tissue Array Construction A tissue microarray (TMA) was constructed by depositing a 1 mm core of each tumor or normal tissue into a wax recipient block using the Manual Tissue Arrayer I (Beecher Instruments Inc., Sun Prairie, WI, USA). In cases where tumor heterogeneity was evident, different representative areas of the tumor were sampled for TMA construction.