Koriem KMM. Tumor necrosis factor alpha-induced protein 3: Biomarker discovery and therapeutic advancement in primary biliary cholangitis. World J Hepatol 2025; 17(11): 112679 [DOI: 10.4254/wjh.v17.i11.112679]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Khaled Mohamed Mohamed Koriem, Professor, Department of Medical Physiology, Medical Research and Clinical Studies Institute, National Research Centre, 33 El-Buhouth Street, Dokki, P.O. Box, Giza 12622, Egypt. kkoriem@yahoo.com
Research Domain of This Article
Gastroenterology & Hepatology
Article-Type of This Article
Letter to the Editor
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Hepatol. Nov 27, 2025; 17(11): 112679 Published online Nov 27, 2025. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v17.i11.112679
Tumor necrosis factor alpha-induced protein 3: Biomarker discovery and therapeutic advancement in primary biliary cholangitis
Khaled Mohamed Mohamed Koriem
Khaled Mohamed Mohamed Koriem, Department of Medical Physiology, Medical Research and Clinical Studies Institute, National Research Centre, Giza 12622, Egypt
Author contributions: Koriem KMM designed the overall concept and outline of the manuscript, contributed to the design of the manuscript, the writing and editing of the manuscript, and review of the literature.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The author declares that he has no conflict of interest to disclose.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Khaled Mohamed Mohamed Koriem, Professor, Department of Medical Physiology, Medical Research and Clinical Studies Institute, National Research Centre, 33 El-Buhouth Street, Dokki, P.O. Box, Giza 12622, Egypt. kkoriem@yahoo.com
Received: August 4, 2025 Revised: August 18, 2025 Accepted: September 28, 2025 Published online: November 27, 2025 Processing time: 116 Days and 22.8 Hours
Abstract
In this article, the author comment on the article by Zang et al. Tumor necrosis factor alpha-induced protein 3 (TNFAIP3) was examined in this study as a novel biomarker to predict the efficiency of ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) and thereby improved primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) treatment. Differentially expressed genes in PBC patients and healthy controls (HCs) were detected using microarray expression analysis. PBC patients and HCs were examined for predictive performance and associations between important genes and clinicopathological features using immunohistochemistry, logistic regression, and receiver operating characteristic curve methods. Thirteen genes linked to the development of PBC were detected by the bioinformatic research. TNFAIP3 was chosen for additional examination from these 13 genes. TNFAIP3 was shown to be more expressed in PBCs patients than in HCs using immunohistochemical method. TNFAIP3 and fatigue have a significant impact on UDCA in PBC patients in multivariate cox regression analysis. Additionally, there was a correlation between TNFAIP3 expression and splenomegaly, alkaline phosphatase, albumin, total bilirubin, and age. In conclusion, TNFAIP3 and fatigue have significant impact on UDCA in PBC. These findings provide a new view on PBC pathophysiology and suggest that TNFAIP3 may be a suitable biomarker or therapeutic target for the disease.
Core Tip: The novel work by Zang et al examined tumor necrosis factor alpha-induced protein 3 (TNFAIP3), a new biomarker, to predict ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) efficiency in primary biliary cholangitis (PBC). PBC patients' TNFAIP3 expression was significantly higher than that in healthy controls. The response to UDCA in PBC was substantially impacted by both TNFAIP3 and fatigue. TNFAIP3 may be a suitable biomarker or therapeutic target for PBC because its expression was also connected with splenomegaly, alkaline phosphatase, albumin, total bilirubin, and age.
