ArticleScientific reports2020
Iron elevates mesenchymal and metastatic biomarkers in HepG2 cells.
Article in Scientific reports, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 21 citations in OpenAlex.
- A fistful of iron: ferritin as a vulnerability point of the brain cancers.Cell death & disease · 2026Review
- Exploring the Role of Metabolic Hyperferritinaemia (MHF) in Steatotic Liver Disease (SLD) and Hepatocellular Carcinoma (HCC).Cancers · 2025Review
- Transferrin receptor uptakes iron from tumor-associated neutrophils to regulate invasion patterns of OSCC.Cancer immunology, immunotherapy : CII · 2025Article
- Identification of key molecular targets for stachyose in hepatocellular carcinoma: focus on STAT3 and FN1.Frontiers in oncology · 2025Article
- Prognostic iron-metabolism signature robustly stratifies single-cell characteristics of hepatocellular carcinoma.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2024Article
- Hypoxia-inducible factor 3α1 increases epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition and iron uptake to drive colorectal cancer liver metastasis.British journal of cancer · 2024Article
- A novel cholesterol metabolism-related ferroptosis pathway in hepatocellular carcinoma.Discover oncology · 2024Article
- AGER1 deficiency-triggered ferroptosis drives fibrosis progression in nonalcoholic steatohepatitis with type 2 diabetes mellitus.Cell death discovery · 2023Article
- Iron as a therapeutic target in chronic liver disease.World journal of gastroenterology · 2023Review
- Progress in investigating the relationship between Schlafen5 genes and malignant tumors.Frontiers in oncology · 2023Review
- Interleukin-6 and Hypoxia Synergistically Promote EMT-Mediated Invasion in Epithelial Ovarian Cancer via the IL-6/STAT3/HIF-1Analytical cellular pathology (Amsterdam) · 2023Article
- Iron and iron-related proteins in alcohol consumers: cellular and clinical aspects.Journal of molecular medicine (Berlin, Germany) · 2022Review
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Liver iron excess is observed in several chronic liver diseases and is associated with the development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, apart from oxidative stress, other cellular mechanisms by which excess iron may mediate/increase HCC predisposition/progression are not known. HCC pathology involves epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT), the basis of cancer phenotype acquisition. Here, the effect of excess iron (holo-transferrin 0-2 g/L for 24 and 48 h) on EMT biomarkers in the liver-derived HepG2 cells was investigated. Holo-transferrin substantially increased intracellular iron. Unexpectedly, mRNA and protein expression of the epithelial marker E-cadherin either remained unaltered or increased. The mRNA and protein levels of metastasis marker N-cadherin and mesenchymal marker vimentin increased significantly. While the mRNA expression of EMT transcription factors SNAI1 and SNAI2 increased and decreased, respectively after 24 h, both factors increased after 48 h. The mRNA expression of TGF-β (EMT-inducer) showed no significant alterations. In conclusion, data showed direct link between iron and EMT. Iron elevated mesenchymal and metastatic biomarkers in HepG2 cells without concomitant decrement in the epithelial marker E-cadherin and altered the expression of the key EMT-mediating transcription factors. Such studies can help identify molecular targets to devise iron-related adjunctive therapies to ameliorate HCC pathophysiology.
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