Poster Presentation 4th Metabolic Diseases; Breakthrough Discoveries in Diabetes & Obesity Meeting 2024

Complete Genetic Ablation of both Acetyl-CoA Carboxylase Enzymes in the Liver Exacerbates Diethylnitrosamine-Induced Hepatocellular Carcinogenesis in Female C57BL/6 Mice (#126)

Riya Shrestha 1 , Calum S. Vancuylenburg 1 , Martina Beretta 1 , Kyle Hoehn 1 , Frances Byrne 1
  1. University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia

Increased sugar consumption promotes excess fat synthesis in the liver through de novo lipogenesis, a hallmark of metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD)1. MAFLD is a rising cause of liver cancer. Acetyl-CoA carboxylase 1 (ACC1) plays a major role in fat synthesis, while acetyl-CoA carboxylase 2 (ACC2) regulates fat breakdown. Both are potential targets for liver cancer therapy2. In our previous study, transgenic mice with liver-specific knockout of ACC1 and ACC2 genes, administered with diethylnitrosamine (DEN) and fed a high-fat diet, showed an unexpected increase in liver tumours compared to the wild-type (WT)3. In this study, we investigated how selective inhibition of ACC isotypes in the liver, the timing of ACC inhibition, and a standard chow diet impact liver tumorigenesis. We used six genotypes of female C57BL/6 mice with floxed ACC1 and/or ACC2 alleles. The mice were injected with DEN at 2 weeks of age, and liver-specific deletion of ACC genes was achieved with AAV8-TBG-Cre virus injection at 9 weeks of age. The mice were fed a standard chow diet and euthanised at 52 weeks of age and livers were examined for tumours. We found that mice completely lacking both ACC1 and ACC2 in the liver had a greater than 5-fold increase in tumour phenotypes compared to the wild-type. In contrast, deletion of ACC1 or ACC2 alone had no significant impact on tumour phenotypes. Our study confirms that increased tumour phenotypes are observed in a DEN liver cancer mouse model with complete inhibition of both ACC isotypes in the liver, regardless of diet, timing, and gene deletion method

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  2. Alannan M, Fayyad-Kazan H, Trezeguet V, Merched A. Targeting Lipid Metabolism in Liver Cancer. Biochemistry. 2020;59(41):3951-64.
  3. Nelson ME, Lahiri S, Chow JD, Byrne FL, Hargett SR, Breen DS, et al. Inhibition of hepatic lipogenesis enhances liver tumorigenesis by increasing antioxidant defence and promoting cell survival. Nat Commun. 2017;8:14689.