Description
Hepatoblastoma (HB) is the most common liver cancer in children, but few pre-treatment tumors have been molecularly profiled. Consequently, there are no validated prognostic or therapeutic biomarkers for HB patients. We report on molecular analysis of 88 clinically-annotated HB tumors. This analysis pointed to three risk-stratifying molecular subtypeslow, intermediate and high riskthat are characterized by differential activation of hepatic progenitor cell markers and metabolic pathways. High-risk tumors are characterized by high NFE2L2 activity and LIN28B, HMGA2, SALL4 and AFP expression, low let-7 expression and HNF1A activity, and high coordinated expression of oncofetal proteins and stem cell markers. Tests on a 35 HB validation set supported these genes as prognostic biomarkers.