The use of minimally invasive biomarkers for the diagnosis and prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma

Abstract

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a common cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. Despite advances in systemic therapies, patient survival remains low due to late diagnosis and frequent underlying liver diseases. HCC diagnosis generally relies on imaging and liver tissue biopsy. Liver biopsy presents limitations because it is invasive, potentially risky for patients and it frequently misrepresents tumour heterogeneity. Recently, liquid biopsy has emerged as a way to monitor cancer progression in a non-invasive manner. Tumours shed content into the bloodstream, such as circulating tumour cells (CTCs), circulating nucleic acids, extracellular vesicles and proteins, that can be isolated from biological fluids of patients with HCC. These biomarkers provide knowledge regarding the genetic landscape of tumours and might be used for diagnostic or prognostic purposes. In this review, we summarize recent literature on circulating biomarkers for HCC, namely CTCs, circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA), RNA, extracellular vesicles and proteins, and their clinical relevance in HCC.

An Inflammatory Response-Related Gene Signature Can Impact the Immune Status and Predict the Prognosis of Hepatocellular Carcinoma

“…However, we are often unable to make early diagnosis and predict the therapeutic effect of HCC due to the small number of useful biomarkers. Previous studies indicated that novel serum biomarkers including circulating tumor cells, circulating nucleic acids (19), and the combination of retinol and retinal panel (20) have excellent accuracy of HCC prognosis. In addition, inflammatory response-related serum biomarkers such as medium-granulocyte ratio, platelet-lymphoid ratio and lymphoid-monocyte ratio also have a good performance in predicting prognosis of HCC (10).…”

Combined hepatocellular-cholangiocarcinoma: An update

“…To the best of our knowledge, no data on this approach are available in cHCC-CCA, although it has been already used in HCC. 104,105 In a recent meta-analysis of 20 studies including 1,191 patients, circulating C B A D Fig. 6.…”

“…tumour cell detection demonstrated good performance for the diagnosis of HCC with a sensitivity of 0.95 and a specificity of 0.60. 105 Finally, the development of a dedicated staging system will also be important to adapt therapeutic strategies and stratify patients for upcoming trials. Indeed, it has been advised to apply the TNM classification of iCCA to cHCC-CCA.…”

Integrated bioinformatics analysis identified MTHFD1L as a potential biomarker and correlated with immune infiltrates in hepatocellular carcinoma

“…Biomarkers are urgently needed for the diagnosis of cancers, such as gastric cancer [1] and liver cancer [2]. Primary liver cancer is one of the most common cause of cancers related death, and is one of the few neoplasms with a steady increasing incidence and mortality in the world [3][4][5].…”