Liquid biopsy to identify biomarkers for immunotherapy in hepatocellular carcinoma.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Ao H
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8686238 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Similar Datasets
Project description:Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a highly prevalent and lethal cancer globally. Over 90% of HCC cases arise in the context of liver cirrhosis, and the severity of the underlying liver disease or advanced tumor stage at diagnosis significantly limits treatment options. Early diagnosis is crucial, and all guidelines stress the importance of screening protocols for HCC early detection as a public health objective. As serum biomarkers are not optimal for early diagnosis, liquid biopsy has emerged as a promising tool for diagnosis, prognostication, and patients' stratification for personalized therapy in various solid tumors, including HCC. While circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are better suited for personalized therapy and prognosis, cell-free DNA (cfDNA) and extracellular vesicle-based technologies show potential for early diagnosis, HCC screening, and surveillance protocols. Evaluating the added value of liquid biopsy genetic and epigenetic biomarkers for HCC screening is a key goal in translational research. Somatic mutations commonly found in HCC can be investigated in cfDNA and plasma exosomes as genetic biomarkers. Unique methylation patterns in cfDNA or cfDNA fragmentome features have been suggested as innovative tools for early HCC detection. Likewise, extracellular vesicle cargo biomarkers such as miRNAs and long non-coding RNAs may serve as potential biomarkers for early HCC detection. This review will explore recent findings on the utility of liquid biopsy for early HCC diagnosis. Combining liquid biopsy methods with traditional serological biomarkers could improve the overall diagnostic accuracy for early HCC detection.
| S-EPMC10556479 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a common malignant tumor with high mortality and poor prognosis in the world. The low rate of early diagnosis, as well as the high risk of postoperative metastasis and recurrence, led to the poor clinical prognosis of HCC patients. Currently, it mainly depends on serum markers, imaging examination, and tissue biopsy to diagnose and determine the recurrence and metastasis of HCC after treatments. Nevertheless, the accuracy and sensitivity of serum markers and imaging for early HCC diagnosis are suboptimal. Tissue biopsy, containing limited tissue samples, is insufficient to reveal comprehensive tumor biology information and is inappropriate to monitor dynamic tumor progression due to its invasiveness. Thus, low invasive diagnostic methods and novel biomarkers with high sensitivity and reliability must be found to improve HCC detection and prediction. As a non-invasive, dynamic, and repeatable detection method, "liquid biopsy", has attracted much attention to early diagnosis and monitoring of treatment response, which promotes the progress of precision medicine. This review summarizes the clinical applications of liquid biopsy in HCC, including circulating tumor cells (CTCs), circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), and exosome in early diagnosis, prognostic evaluation, disease monitoring, and guiding personalized treatment.
| S-EPMC8860830 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the leading causes of cancer related death worldwide. Diagnostic, prognostic, and predictive biomarkers are urgently needed in order to improve patient survival. Indeed, the most widely used biomarkers, such as alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), have limited accuracy as both diagnostic and prognostic tests. Liver biopsy provides an insight on the biology of the tumor, but it is an invasive procedure, not routinely used, and not representative of the whole neoplasia due to the demonstrated intra-tumoral heterogeneity. In recent years, liquid biopsy, defined as the molecular analysis of cancer by-products, released by the tumor in the bloodstream, emerged as an appealing source of new biomarkers. Several studies focused on evaluating extracellular vesicles, circulating tumor cells, cell-free DNA and non-coding RNA as novel reliable biomarkers. In this review, we aimed to provide a comprehensive overview on the most relevant available evidence on novel circulating biomarkers for early diagnosis, prognostic stratification, and therapeutic monitoring. Liquid biopsy seems to be a very promising instrument and, in the near future, some of these new non-invasive tools will probably change the clinical management of HCC patients.
| S-EPMC8126224 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Hepatocellular cancer is the sixth most frequently diagnosed malignant disease worldwide, and was responsible for tens of millions of deaths in 2020; however, treatment options for patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma remain limited. Immunotherapy has undergone rapid development over recent years, especially in the field of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs). These drugs aim to activate and enhance antitumor immunity and represent a new prospect for the treatment of patients with advanced cancer. Nevertheless, only a small proportion of liver cancer patients currently benefit from ICI-based treatment, highlighting the need to better understand how ICIs and tumors interact, as well as identify predictive biomarkers for immunotherapeutic responses. In this review, we highlight clinical trials and basic research in hepatocellular carcinoma, with a particular focus on predictive biomarkers for the therapeutic efficacy of ICIs. Predictive biomarkers for immune-related adverse events are also discussed.
| S-EPMC8450565 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Advances in our knowledge of the molecular characteristics of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) have enabled significant progress in the detection and therapeutic prediction of HCC. As a non-invasive alternative to tissue biopsy, liquid biopsy examines circulating cellular components such as exosomes, nucleic acids, and cell-free DNA found in body fluids (e.g., urine, saliva, ascites, and pleural effusions) and provides information about tumor characteristics. Technical advances in liquid biopsy have led to the increasing adoption of diagnostic and monitoring applications for HCC. This review summarizes the various analytes, ongoing clinical trials, and case studies of United States Food and Drug Administrationapproved in vitro diagnostic applications for liquid biopsy, and provides insight into its implementation in managing HCC.
| S-EPMC10035729 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The recent successful use of the immune checkpoint inhibitors (CPIs) anti-programmed death receptor-1 (PD-1)/PD-1 ligand 1 in clinical trials indicates their crucial role in obtaining an effective cancer immune therapy. These CPIs have been identified to have an effective therapeutic response, particularly in tumors with high tumor mutation burden. Targeting private somatic mutations encoding immunogenic neoantigens (neo-Ags) has been developed as an autologous gene therapy. T-cell receptor-engineered T cells targeting neo-Ags are a novel option for adoptive cell therapy used for the treatment of lung cancer. However, not all patients experience an effective response from immunotherapy. Although the resistance mechanism of CPIs has been reported, its association with other treatment methods during systemic anticancer therapy remains unclear, particularly the treatment options following the emergence of drug resistance in lung cancer. The potential biomarkers used for liquid biopsy may assist in the identification of patients who would benefit the most from immunotherapy. Attempts to identify potential biomarkers for predicting clinical response to immunotherapy are underway. With regard to liquid biopsy, the present review summarizes and discusses the lung cancer management of immunotherapy for precision medicine by reviewing recent literature and associated clinical trials.
| S-EPMC6507432 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common cancers and a leading cause of death worldwide. Due to latent liver disease, late diagnosis, and nonresponse to systemic treatments, surgical resection and/or biopsy specimens are still generally considered as the gold standard by clinicians for clinical decision-making until now. Since the conventional tissue biopsy is invasive and contains small tissue samples, it is unable to represent tumor heterogeneity or monitor dynamic tumor progression. Therefore, it is imperative to find a new less invasive or noninvasive diagnostic strategy to detect HCC at an early stage and to monitor HCC recurrence. Over the past years, a new diagnostic concept known as "liquid biopsy" has emerged with substantial attention. Liquid biopsy is noninvasive and allows repeated analyses to monitor tumor recurrence, metastasis or treatment responses in real time. With the advanced development of new molecular techniques, HCC circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) detection have achieved interesting and encouraging results. In this review, we focus on the clinical applications of CTCs and ctDNA as key components of liquid biopsy in HCC patients.
| S-EPMC6607541 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Newer immunotherapy agents may break the barrier that tumors create to evade the attack from the immune system. Dendritic cell vaccination has shown encouraging clinical activity and a favorable safety profile in advanced tumor stages. However, optimal cell maturation status, choice of tumor antigens and route of administration have not been established. Single or multiple peptides derived from tumor-associated antigens may also be used for cancer vaccination. Intratumoral delivery of oncolytic viruses expressing immunostimulating cytokines like GM-CSF have produced stimulating clinical results that need further verification. But it is probably T-cell checkpoint modulation with monoclonal antibodies that has attracted the highest expectations. Promising activity has been reported for tremelimumab, a CTLA-4 inhibitor, and a clinical trial testing the PD-1 antibody nivolumab is underway. Future progress will probably come from a better understanding of the mechanisms of cancer-related immunosuppression, improvement in agents and strategies and combination of the available therapeutic tools.
| S-EPMC6095173 | biostudies-other
Project description:The diagnosis and management of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) have improved significantly in recent years. With the introduction of immunotherapy-based combination therapy, there has been a notable expansion in treatment options for patients with unresectable HCC. Simultaneously, innovative molecular tests for early detection and management of HCC are emerging. This progress prompts a key question: as liquid biopsy techniques rise in prominence, will they replace traditional tissue biopsies, or will both techniques remain relevant? Given the ongoing challenges of early HCC detection, including issues with ultrasound sensitivity, accessibility, and patient adherence to surveillance, the evolution of diagnostic techniques is more relevant than ever. Furthermore, the accurate stratification of HCC is limited by the absence of reliable biomarkers which can predict response to therapies. While the advantages of molecular diagnostics are evident, their potential has not yet been fully harnessed, largely because tissue biopsies are not routinely performed for HCC. Liquid biopsies, analysing components such as circulating tumour cells, DNA, and extracellular vesicles, provide a promising alternative, though they are still associated with challenges related to sensitivity, cost, and accessibility. The early results from multi-analyte liquid biopsy panels are promising and suggest they could play a transformative role in HCC detection and management; however, comprehensive clinical validation is still ongoing. In this review, we explore the challenges and potential of both tissue and liquid biopsy, highlighting that these diagnostic methods, while distinct in their approaches, are set to jointly reshape the future of HCC management.
| S-EPMC10923008 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common type of liver cancer, is derived mostly from a background of chronic inflammation. Multiple immunotherapeutic strategies have been evaluated in HCC, with some degree of success, particularly with immune checkpoint blockade (ICB). Despite the initial enthusiasm, treatment benefit is only appreciated in a modest proportion of patients (response rate to single agent ~20%). Therapy-induced immune-related adverse events (irAEs) and economic impact are pertinent considerations with ICB. It is imperative that a deeper understanding of its mechanisms of action either as monotherapy or in combination with other therapeutic agents is needed. We herein discuss the latest developments in the immunotherapeutic approaches for HCC, the potential predictive biomarkers., and the rationale for combination therapies. We also outline promising future immunotherapeutic strategies for HCC patients.
| S-EPMC6966558 | biostudies-literature