The correlation between two rare diseases is really difficulty for clinicians.The emergence of next-generation sequencing technologies has provided a simple and powerful approach for discovering de novo disease-associated genes, and these methods have furthered our understanding of the rare HMEC,which lacked the traditional high risk factors such as hepatitis B, hepatitis C, long-term alcohol intake history and cirrhosis,like most primary HMEC cases reported in the literatures(Table 1).In 2006, Zhu et al. reported an adult male patient, also absent for high risk factors who was first diagnosed with unusual HCC metastatic to right proximal ulna and metachronous esophageal squamous cell carcinoma resulting from the history of Fanconi’s anemia12.Linares et al also report on a 31-year-old female patients with synchronous squamous cell carcinoma of esophagus and HCC associated with Fanconi’s anemia13.However,the present case only showed mild anemia, with an absence of the typical Fanconi’s anemia phenotype,only present of family Fanconi’s anemia gene carriers.In fact,increasing evidence has suggested that monoallelic carriers for Fanconi’s anemia genes were characterized by a adult-set predisposition to most solid cancers, especially squamous cell carcinomas from the epithelia of genitourinary tracts and the aerodigestive system14.A previous study by Alter et al. reported that 20–30% of germline Fanconi’s anemia presents with unusual solid malignancies as the first clinic manifestation and shows absence of the phenotype of congenital Fanconi’s anemia14, 15. Interestingly,three patients were reported with HMEC,also absence of Fancon’s anaemia, combined with synchronous hepatocellular carcinoma16, synchronous squamous cell carcinoma in the cranial skin17 and metachronous gastric malignant carcinoma18.
In fact,the phenotypes of germline Fanconi’s anemia mutation-related solid tumors were probably determined in mutation loads or a dose-dependent manner14.So far, a total of 22 proteins (FANCA—FANCW/RFWD3 genes coding) and other FA network genes have been identified to function in Fanconi’s anemia pathway19. These proteins participate in pathways including genome maintenance processes and DNA repair in response to DNA damage, as well as interstrand cross-linking repair, homologous recombination and non-homologous terminal junctions20. Compared with the 22 Fanconi’s anemia genes, FAN1 has a mild role in interstrand crosslink repair and even patients with homozygous mutation in FAN1 were absent of Fanconi’s anemia features.However,Lachaud et al showed that FAN1 defects can cause cancers in knockin mice, and also FAN1 variant in high-risk pancreatic cancers abolishes recruitment by Ub-FANCD2, resulted in genetic instability without affecting interstrand crosslink repair21.Otherwise germline FAN1 mutation,occurred frequently in high-risk pancreatic cancers22 and hereditary susceptibility to familial colorectal cancers23.In the present case,we testified FAN1 mutations were present in the pedigree .Therefore, we propose that germline Fanconi’s anemia mutations are probably predisposing factors to the occurrence of HMEC.
More importantly,Mutations in the GNAS gene typically occur at exon 8, in which Arg201 is converted to either a cysteine (R201C) or a histidine (R201H), lead to activation of the Gαs subunit. This Gαs constitutively activate the intracellular cyclin adenosine adenosine monophosphate(cAMP) signal pathway24.Otherwise, GNAS R201H/C missense mutation have been showed a cross-communication between JAK/STAT and cyclic-AMP pathways in rare subtypes of liver inflammatory tumorigenesis25.Farges et al. also described an adult male patient with inflammatory hepatic adenoma associated with Fanconi’s anemia and somatic GNAS mutation who developed malignant transformation of HCC26.Consistent with inflammatory phenotype in the present HMEC, previous studies reported three HMEC patients with inflammation phenotype and inflammatory cell infiltration in the corresponding tumor-free liver tissue26.Otherwise, somatic GNAS R201H/C mutation occurs frequently in secreting-mucous tumors like pancreatic intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms (IPMN) as a bona fide precursor to carcinogenesis29. GNAS R201 mutation was detected in pancreatic IPMN tissue, secretin-stimulated pancreatic juice and peripheral blood30.The mucus production and carcinogenesis of the intestinal subtype of intraductal papillary neoplasm of the biliary ducts (IPNB), a counterpart of pancreatic IPMN, have also been connected with gain-of-function mutations of GNAS R20131.Otherwise, The protein-truncating genetic variants in the present case included a frameshift insertion in ELF3 and nonsense mutation in KMT2C, which were also reported in biliary tumors as tumor suppressors, with consistently positive immunohistochemical results for CK7 and CK19 in the present case,which may suggest the possibility that HMEC originates from the biliary system32.Moreover, GNAS and KMT2C were almost only muated in O.viverrini-CHL compared non-O.viverrini-CHL,which consistent with Jarley K et.al study that three HMEC patients were induced by biliary parasite infection33.and may explained that most HMECs(20/23) were reported in Asia areas with a high incidence of parasites(Table 2).
In conclusion, the molecular characteristics of the current HMEC were more similar to primary liver biliary tumors rather than to SMEC. We present here for the first time the etiology of HMEC associated with germline Fanconi’s anemia mutations and somatic GNAS R201 mutation.