Hepatoma Derived Growth Factor (HDGF)

Nakamura et al. (1994) purified a novel hepatoma-derived growth factor from the conditioned medium of human hepatoma-derived cell line HuH-7. Molecular cloning of a cDNA from the cDNA library of the same cell line was done on the basis of the N-terminal amino acid sequence. The cDNA was 2.4 kb long and the deduced amino acid sequence contained 240 amino acids without a signal peptide-like N-terminal hydrophobic sequence. The primary sequence shared homology with the high mobility group-1 protein; they showed 23.4% amino acid identity and 35.6% amino acid similarity.By immunofluorescence study, Nakamura et al. (1994) showed that HDGF is localized in the cytoplasm of hepatoma cells and northern blots showed that it is expressed ubiquitously in normal tissues and tumor cell lines.