LFIRE-1/HFREP-1, a liver-specific gene, is frequently downregulated and has growth suppressor activity in hepatocellular carcinoma.

We have previously identified several novel genes, which are differentially expressed among human normal liver and hepatocellular carcinomas (HCCs). The full-length liver fibrinogen-related gene-1 (LFIRE-1) cDNA was cloned from the human normal liver cDNA library. LFIRE-1 is highly homologous to HFREP-1 with discrepancy at 5' untranslated region (UTR) and encodes the same fibrinogen-related protein, which suggest that these two sequences might be alternative splicing forms of the same gene, LFIRE-1/HFREP-1, located at human chromosome 8p22. The LFIRE-1 and HFREP-1 are specifically expressed in normal human liver tissue, but reduced or undetectable in most of HCC specimens at both RNA and protein level. Furthermore, the reduction or nonexpression of LFIRE-1/HFREP-1 is significantly associated with the degree of tumor differentiation. Loss of heterozygosity (LOH) analysis revealed allelic loss of LFIRE-1/HFREP-1 on chromosome 8p22 in 57.1% (24/42) of HCC specimens. We detected three inactivation mutations among 45 cases of HCC specimens examined, two of which lost the remaining allele and the third had a replacement of conserved cysteine residue with glycine residue. Notably, the downregulation of LFIRE-1/HFREP-1 expression is frequently associated with allelic loss. The reduction of LFIRE-1/HFREP-1 expression by antisense approach enhances cancer cell proliferation and colony formation in soft agar. Moreover, restoration of exogenous wild-type LFIRE-1/HFREP-1 expression but not LFIRE-1/HFREP-1 missense mutations in human HCC cells inhibited their anchorage-dependent or -independent growth in vitro, and suppressed their tumorigenicity in nude mice. In conclusion, our data demonstrated that liver-specific gene LFIRE-1/HFREP-1 was frequently downregulated and might possess growth suppressor activity in HCC.