Personalized Therapy and Liquid Biopsy—A Focus on Colorectal Cancer

Abstract

(1) Background: Resistance mechanisms represent a barrier to anti-cancer therapies. Liquid biopsies would allow obtaining additional information in order to develop targeted therapies to thwart the resistance phenomena but also to follow in time real response to treatment and be able to adapt it the most quickly possible way in case of resistance. (2) Methods: herein we summarize the different liquid biopsies which are currently under research; we then review the literature and focalize on one of their potential roles: the theranostic one and especially in the cases of colorectal cancers. (3) Results: few studies targeting liquid biopsy as a potential tool to adapt cancer treatments are present in the literature and encompass few patients. (4) Conclusions: further research is needed to prove the efficiency of LB. Indeed, it seems a promising tool to guide treatment by targeting actionable mutations with detection of resistant mutations.

Medical Relevance, State-of-the-Art and Perspectives of “Sweet Metacode” in Liquid Biopsy Approaches

“…In the current scientific literature, the glycoprofiling of proteins (i.e., partially or completely identifying a glycan structure covalently attached to a protein backbone) is not usually listed among "liquid biopsy" approaches, despite the fact that such assays can indicate that attention needs to be paid to a specific organ or a group of organs and identify the process of tumourigenesis at an early stage. Another important aspect of liquid biopsy is to provide information about the stage of the disease and a prognosis for the patient's survival, possibly a design for a personalised therapy plan [21]. Herein we present the current state-of-the-art for glycoprofiling of novel glycoproteomic biomarkers, mainly focusing on sialic acids (N-acetylneuraminic acid-Neu5Ac-and N-glycolylneuraminic acid-Neu5Gc-respectively) in early cancer diagnostics as a possible multi-omics liquid biopsy approach for the analysis of prevalence and also for more aggressive cancer types, such as non-small-cell lung cancer [22,23].…”