Liquid biopsy techniques and pancreatic cancer: diagnosis, monitoring, and evaluation

Abstract

Pancreatic cancer (PC) is one of the most common malignancies. Surgical resection is a potential curative approach for PC, but most patients are unsuitable for operations when at the time of diagnosis. Even with surgery, some patients may still experience tumour metastasis during the operation or shortly after surgery, as precise prognosis evaluation is not always possible. If patients miss the opportunity for surgery and resort to chemotherapy, they may face the challenging issue of chemotherapy resistance. In recent years, liquid biopsy has shown promising prospects in disease diagnosis, treatment monitoring, and prognosis assessment. As a noninvasive detection method, liquid biopsy offers advantages over traditional diagnostic procedures, such as tissue biopsy, in terms of both cost-effectiveness and convenience. The information provided by liquid biopsy helps clinical practitioners understand the molecular mechanisms underlying tumour occurrence and development, enabling the formulation of more precise and personalized treatment decisions for each patient. This review introduces molecular biomarkers and detection methods in liquid biopsy for PC, including circulating tumour cells (CTCs), circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA), noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs), and extracellular vesicles (EVs) or exosomes. Additionally, we summarize the applications of liquid biopsy in the early diagnosis, treatment response, resistance assessment, and prognostic evaluation of PC.

Closing the diagnostic gap: Liquid biopsy potential to transform ovarian cancer outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa

“…While traditional diagnostic methods often require a team of highly specialized healthcare professionals, LB is less dependent on such expertise. [28] Given the scarcity of specialized medical personnel in many underserved regions, this is a crucial advantage. LB procedures can be conducted and interpreted by a broader range of healthcare practitioners, reducing the burden on the limited pool of specialized experts and increasing the availability of this diagnostic approach.…”

Liquid biopsy techniques and lung cancer: diagnosis, monitoring and evaluation

“…As tumor cells proliferate, liquid biopsies unveil additional insights into tumor characteristics by detecting tumor cells or genetic material released into bodily fluids [ 12 ]. This highly sensitive technique not only diagnoses tumors but also provides crucial details about the tumor, such as pathological typing, the stage of tumor progression, and mutations in tumor-associated genes [ 13 ]. While blood remains the most commonly utilized liquid biopsy in clinical practice, other clinical samples like cerebrospinal fluid, saliva, ascites, pleural fluid, and urine are also employed.…”

High somatic mutations in circulating tumor DNA predict response of metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma to first-line nab-paclitaxel plus S-1: prospective study

“…For mPDAC, there often exists difficulty in obtaining tumor tissue via fine-needle biopsy. Liquid biopsy, especially detection and dynamic tracking of mutations within circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), emerges as a promising minimally-/non-invasive tumor-specific method for monitoring of treatment response and resistance, and offers advantages over conventional tissue biopsy, including cost-effectiveness, timeliness, feasibility, convenience, and repeatability [ 15 , 16 ]. ctDNA is the DNA fragment released into circulation from tumor cells, and can help clinicians understand the real-time molecular events underlying cancer progression, enabling the formulation of more precise, stratified, and individualized treatment decisions and follow-up schedules to optimize patient outcomes through multidisciplinary biology-based approaches.…”