Increased level of serum hepatocyte growth factor/scatter factor in liver cancer is associated with tumor metastasis.

Hepatocyte growth factor/scatter factor (HGF/SF) has been shown to play an important role in tumor migration and metastasis. We therefore investigated the relationship between HGF/SF expression and metastasis of human liver tumors. The serum HGF/SF levels in 41 patients with primary hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC; 22 patients with metastasis, 19 patients without metastasis); 4 patients with benign hepatic tumor, 4 patients with secondary hepatic carcinoma, and 12 healthy blood donors, were measured by sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in this study. Our results show that liver tumor patients have significantly higher serum levels of HGF/SF compared to healthy blood donors. However, there is no difference between the serum HGF/SF levels in patients with primary HCC and patients with secondary HCC or benign hepatic tumors. In addition, we measured significantly higher levels of HGF/SF in serum from HCC patients with metastasis compared to HCC patients without metastasis, indicating that the elevations in serum HGF/SF level correlated positively with the tumor metastasis in human HCC. These findings appear to suggest that HGF/SF may be a useful serological biomarker for clinical diagnosis and follow-up of HCC metastasis, and suggest that larger scale studies in patients with hepatomas are warranted.