Moreover, CDH1 hypermethylation was not associated with gender, tumor grade, clinical stage, hepatitis B virus (HBV), or hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection in HCC patients.
HCV core interacted with Snail and enhanced its binding to the E-box in the promoter region of E-cadherin, leading to decreased E-cadherin promoter activity.
In this study, we found that ectopic expression of HCV core protein or infection with HCV in human hepatocytes upregulated the levels of the transcriptional repressors, E12 and E47, resulting in inactivation of the E-cadherin promoter, containing E-box motifs, and subsequent repression of its expression.