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Abstract
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common fatal
malignancies in the world with very poor outcome which is largely due to late
detection of the diseases. Serum AFP is the most widely studied screening
test for detecting HCC with a normal range up to 20 ng/ml and a level > 400
ng/ml is usually regarded as diagnostic. Nevertheless, around 60% of HCC
patients with focal lesion less than 4 cm have serum AFP levels less than 200
ng/ml and up to 20% HCC patients do not produce AFP. These conditions
make early detection of HCC is a challenging medical problem.
Osteopontin (OPN) was identified as one of the leading genes that could be
used to predict the metastatic potential of HCC. Several studies had shown
that plasma OPN is significantly higher in patients with HCC. Over expression
of OPN was found to be correlated with the metastatic potential of primary
HCC and results suggested that OPN might be a prognostic marker and, thus,
a potential therapeutic target for HCC.