Ehrlich Ascites carcinoma mice model for studying liver inflammation and fibrosis

Abstract

Hepatic inflammation and fibrosis are the most common pathological conditions of chronic liver diseases such as obesity associated non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), Alcohol associated liver disease (ALD), viral hepatitis and which can further progress to Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The role of hepatic angiogenesis in the progression of inflammation, fibrosis, tumor development and metastasis are known from long time. However, the role of breast cancer associated tumor angiogenesis in liver inflammation and fibrosis is not well studied and still elusive. Therefore, in this study, we established a mouse model (EAC) to study the role of breast cancer associated tumor angiogenesis in liver inflammation and fibrosis. We used EAC cells to induce liquid tumor in Swiss albino mice and studied their effect on liver functions. We noticed a considerable rise in body weight and liver weight in EAC tumor bearing mice along with increased peritoneal neo-angiogenesis. Further, EAC tumor bearing mice revealed the increased expression of liver enzymes and elevated glucose level which are involved in the cause of liver inflammation, which is evident from our immunohistochemistry data. Further, we validated our in vivo data with various bioinformatics tools and compared the expression of TNF-α and TGF-β with liver inflammation and fibrosis and VEGF and MTDH with angiogenesis. Based on our multiapproach study, we suggest that EAC induced tumor angiogenesis can be used as a suitable model to discover new and more potential therapeutic targets for the treatment of inflammation associated hepatic injury, especially, in patients suffering from cancer associated hepatitis.

Keywords

• Erhlich ascites carcinoma
• Hepatitis
• Tumor angiogenesis
• Inflammation
• Fibrosis