Liquid biopsy in endometrial cancer

Abstract

Liquid biopsy (LB) is an emerging tool for the evaluation of relapse in several cancers and nowadays is used in lung cancer for primary detection and molecular characterization when tumoral tissue is not available. It can represent an innovative biospecimen for the screening, diagnosis, and monitoring of all types of cancer and for monitoring of therapeutic efficacy. LB includes several biofluids such as blood, urine, peritoneal fluid/lavage, and analytes (circulating tumor cells, circulating tumor DNA, long noncoding RNA, microRNA, vesicles, mRNA, and protein) that can play different roles in diagnosis, prognosis, and patient management as well as in the improvement of the knowledge of cancer evolution. Endometrial cancer (EC) is a tumor usually detected at low stage with a good prognosis, but few low risk cases, unexpectedly, can evolve to bad prognosis. Up to now, no molecular target exists to treat advanced stage or to define the evolution of low stage EC. This review focuses on how the LB may help in the management and characterization of patients affected by EC.

The Potential of Liquid Biopsy in Detection of Endometrial Cancer Biomarkers: A Pilot Study

“…Fluid collection is minimally invasive, ranging from blood, urine, lavage, cerebrospinal and peritoneal fluids to saliva samples. The analysed samples may include circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA)/cell-free DNA (cfDNA), circulating tumour cells and proteins, and other circulating biomarkers including RNA, vesicles, and platelets [30,31]. Compared to other tumour types (breast, colorectal, cancer, and prostate), research on liquid biopsy in EC is limited and is not used in clinical practice.…”

“…Compared to other tumour types (breast, colorectal, cancer, and prostate), research on liquid biopsy in EC is limited and is not used in clinical practice. However, with the advent of molecular classifications, this approach shows the potential to provide diagnostic and prognostic information that could lead to screening, monitoring, and proper stratification of patients with EC [30][31][32]. The latest studies reveal that EC biomarkers are detectable, especially at the later stages because of the increased quantity of ctDNA/cfDNA found in blood [32,33].…”

MicroRNA-199b Deregulation Shows Oncogenic Properties and Promising Clinical Value as Circulating Marker in Locally Advanced Rectal Cancer Patients

“…The obtention of liquid biopsies is minimally invasive and can be repeated several times. Moreover, it is a cost-effective method that can be used to screen and monitor both disease evolution and treatment response as well as to identify cellular subclones involved in relapse, metastasis or treatment resistance [13,14]. Liquid biopsy refers to the isolation of cancer-derived components, such as circulating tumor cells (CTC), circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), microRNAs (miRs), long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and proteins, from peripheral blood or other body fluids, and their genomic or proteomic assessment [15].…”

Advances in cancer early diagnosis with liquid biopsy-based approaches

“…The four reviews in this special issue provided timely summaries of related research from a perspective of an individual cancer or cancers in general. D'Amico et al [2] reviewed clinical evidence for the utility of liquid biopsy in detecting early breast cancer. They argued that combining molecular information from liquid biopsy or integration with sensitive and complementary ctDNA technologies may be the key for the practice-changing implementation of liquid biopsy in managing early breast cancer.…”