Liver cancer has high rates of morbidity and mortality, and its treatment is a global health challenge. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) accounts for 90% of all primary liver cancer cases. B-lymphoma Mo-MLV insertion region 1 ( BMI1) has been identified as a proto-oncogene, which contributes to the initiation and progression of many malignant tumors. BMI1 expression is upregulated in HCC, and it influences the occurrence and development of HCC by various mechanisms, such as the INK4a/ARF locus, NF-κB signaling pathway, and PTEN/PI3K/AKT signaling pathway. In addition, the expression of BMI1 is related to prognosis and recurrence of HCC. Hence, there is clear evidence that BMI1 is a novel and valid therapeutic target for HCC. Accordingly, the development of therapeutic strategies targeting BMI1 has been a focus of recent research, providing new directions for HCC treatment. This review summarizes the role of BMI1 in the occurrence and treatment of HCC, which will provide a basis for using BMI1 as a potential target for the development of therapeutic strategies for HCC.

Although the role of fibrinogen-like protein 1 (FGL1) in tumorigenesis is well known, a pan-cancer analysis of FGL1 lacks. We used bioinformatics techniques to analyze cancer data from publicly available datasets from The Cancer Genome Atlas, UALCAN, TIMER, Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis, cBioPortal, Search Tool for the Retrieval of Interacting Genes, and DAVID. FGL1 expression was significantly regulated in various common tumors than in normal tissues; it was increased in lung adenocarcinoma and decreased in colon adenocarcinoma. Cox regression analysis demonstrated that the upregulation of FGL1 expression was correlated with poor overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) in stomach adenocarcinoma, brain low-grade glioma, cervical squamous cell carcinoma, and endocervical adenocarcinoma. Decreased FGL1 methylation levels were observed in majority of tumor types. FGL1 expression was significantly associated with the levels of immune cell subtypes and immune checkpoint genes. Deep deletion was the most common genetic mutation in FGL1 that led to frame-shift mutations, which was closely associated with poor progression-free interval, disease-specific survival, and OS in patients with FGL1 mutations. Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes enrichment analysis showed that FGL1-related genes participate in diverse pathways. Ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis is significantly correlated to the function of FGL1, which was identified for the first time in the present study. This pan-cancer study provides a deep understanding of the functions of FGL1 in progression of many tumors and demonstrates that FGL1 may be a potential biomarker for the diagnosis, prognosis, and immune infiltration in cancer.

Water-soluble vitamins play essential roles in normal body functions and metabolic activities. However, few methods have simultaneously measured all nine water-soluble vitamins in biological matrices. In this study, we developed a sensitive and accurate method for the simultaneous measurement of thiamine (B1), riboflavin (B2), nicotinamide (B3), pantothenic acid (B5), 4-pyridoxic acid (B6), biotin (B7), 5-methyltetrahydrofolic acid (B9), ascorbic acid (VC), and methylmalonic acid (MMA) in human serum. Samples were analyzed using ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS) with Waters HSS T₃ and BEH C₁₈ columns, each measuring 2.1 × 50 mm with a particle size of 1.7 μm. The mass spectrometer was equipped with an electrospray ionization source, and optimized multiple reaction monitoring was employed to detect all compounds in positive ionization mode. The capillary voltage was set at 0.5 kV. Nitrogen was used as the desolvation gas, with a flow rate of 1000 L/h at 500 °C. Argon was used as the collision gas. The method's performance was validated according to the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute guidelines assessing linearity, limit of quantitation, precision, accuracy, carryover, matrix effects, recovery, and dilution. The results confirmed the successful validation of this method for water-soluble vitamins in serum. However, the presence of common endogenous interferences and the type of blood collection tube influenced the results for certain water-soluble vitamins. The results showed that this method was satisfactory, offering significant improvements in analytical performance, including shorter analysis time, higher sensitivity, and the requirement of a smaller sample volume.