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Armengol et al. Hepatoma Res 2021;7:50 Hepatoma Research
DOI: 10.20517/2394-5079.2021.19

Review Open Access

Bridging molecular basis, prognosis, and treatment

of pediatric liver tumors

3,4
1,2
Carolina Armengol , Stefano Cairo , Roland Kappler 5
1
Childhood Liver Oncology Group, Germans Trias I Pujol Research Institute (IGTP), Program of Predictive and Personalized
Medicine of Cancer (PMPCC), Badalona 08916, Spain.
2
Network for Biomedical Research in Hepatic and Digestive Diseases (CIBERehd), Spain.
3
R&D department, XenTech, Evry 91000, France.
4
Pediatric hematology, oncology and hematopoietic cell & gene therapy lab, Istituto di Ricerca Pediatrica (IRP), Padova 35127,
Italy.
5
Department of Pediatric Surgery, Dr. von Hauner Children’s Hospital, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Munich 80337,
Germany.
Correspondence to: Dr. Carolina Armengol, Childhood Liver Oncology Group (c-LOG), Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute
(IGTP), Edifici Muntanya, Campus Can Ruti, Ctra. de Can Ruti. Camí de les Escoles, s/n, Badalona 08916, Spain.
E-mail: carmengol@igtp.cat
How to cite this article: Armengol C, Cairo S, Kappler R. Bridging molecular basis, prognosis, and treatment of pediatric liver
tumors. Hepatoma Res 2021;7:50. https://dx.doi.org/10.20517/2394-5079.2021.19

Received: 15 Feb 2021 First Decision: 12 May 2021 Revised: 17 May 2021 Accepted: 25 May2021 First online: 2 Jun 2021
Academic Editors: Guang-Wen Cao, Piotr Czauderna, Daniel C. Aronson Copy Editor: Yue-Yue Zhang Production Editor: Yue-
Yue Zhang

Abstract
A deeper understanding of the genetic and molecular basis of hepatoblastoma (HB) has fueled the hope to help in
identifying genes and signaling pathways that are amenable to therapeutic intervention. However, it has become
clear that HB is a genetically very simple cancer and that rather alterations of the transcriptome or epigenome will
facilitate a more stratified and rationalized approach to current therapeutics. In this review, we discuss recent
findings on genomic, transcriptomic, and epigenomic data and their potential to serve as biomarkers and predictors
of patient’s outcome. We also describe the state of the art in HB experimental biology, the in vitro and in vivo HB
models that are currently available, and their use to improve our understanding of this disease and identify new
treatment options.

Keywords: Hepatoblastoma, childhood liver cancer, genomics, transcriptomics, epigenomics, cell models,
xenograft, therapeutic target

© The Author(s) 2021. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, sharing,
adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, for any purpose, even commercially, as
long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and
indicate if changes were made.

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