Characterisation of concurrent liver injury and oncogenes in a plasmid-based mouse model of liver cancer

This experiment aimed to characterise transcriptomes of plasmid-based mouse models of liver cancer, hepatotoxin-induced chronic liver injury and the combination thereof. In detail, C57BL/6JAusb mice received hydrodynamic tail vein injection (HTVI) of plasmids encoding Sleeping Beauty transposase (SB), alone or in combination with transposon plasmids encoding myristylated AKT1 (AKT), c-Met and NRasV12 (NRas), previously characterised by Ho et al. (2012) (Hepatology 55(3):833-45) and Hu et al. (2016) (Sci Rep 6:20484). 8-10 days post-HTVI, mice began biweekly intraperitoneal (i.p.) injections of saline or the hepatotoxin thioacetamide (TAA), 10-11 doses. Overall design: There are 6 groups: 1) SB + saline (healthy control) (SB plasmid by HTVI and i.p. saline; 4 mice (180702, 180724, 180725, 180726)), 2) SB + TAA (Liver injury alone) (SB plasmid by HTVI, i.p. TAA; 4 mice (180704, 180705, 180706, 180727)), 3) SB/AKT/c-Met + saline, (Liver cancer model 1) (SB, AKT and c-Met plasmids by HTVI, i.p. saline; 3 mice (180707, 180708, 180748)) 4) SB/AKT/c-Met + TAA (Liver cancer model 1 + injury) (SB, AKT and c-Met plasmids by HTVI, i.p. TAA; 4 mice (180710, 180712, 180713, 180714)), 5) SB/AKT/NRas + saline (Liver cancer model 2) (SB, AKT and NRas plasmids by HTVI, i.p. saline; 4 mice (180715, 180716, 180717, 180749)) and 6) SB/AKT/NRas + TAA (Liver cancer model 2 + injury) (SB, AKT and NRas plasmids by HTVI, i.p. TAA; 5 mice (180719, 180720, 180721, 180722, 180723)).