ABSTRACTS


Hepatic Oncology Review


The clinical role of ‘liquid biopsy’ in hepatocellular carcinoma


Jessica A Howell1,2,3 & Rohini Sharma4


1Department of Hepatology, St Mary’s Hospital, Imperial College, UK 2Centre for Population Health, MacFarlane-Burnet Institute, Australia 3Department of Medicine, The University of Melbourne, Australia


4


Department of Oncology, Hammersmith Hospital, Imperial College, UK Hepatic Oncology 3(1), 45–55 (2016).


Editorial


Circulating free tumor DNA (ctDNA) is DNA released from necrotic or apoptotic tumor cells into the bloodstream. Absolute levels of ctDNA, as well as genetic mutations and epigenetic changes detected in ctDNA are useful biomarkers of tumor biology, progression and response to therapy in many tumor types and recent evidence suggests they may be useful in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). ctDNA detected in blood, therefore, offers a minimally invasive, easily repeated ‘liquid biopsy’ of cancer, providing real-time dynamic analysis of tumor behavior and treatment response that could revolutionize both clinical and research practice in HCC. In this review, we provide a critical summary of the evidence for the utility of ctDNA as a diagnostic and prognostic biomarker in HCC.


Access this article at:


www.oncology-central.com/2016/04/11/the-clinical-role-of-liquid-biopsy-in- hepatocellular-carcinoma


Potential of circulating tumor cells as blood-based biomarkers in cancer liquid biopsy


Thomas Schlange1 1


& Klaus Pantel2


Bayer Pharma AG, Global Biomarker Research, 42096 Wuppertal, Germany 2


Pharmacogenomics 17(3), 183–186 (2016).


Despite the first reports of circulating cells from solid tumors shed light on the circulation in deceased and in living patients in 1869 [1] and the mid 1950s [2],


respectively, it took almost 50 years until the introduction of the CellSearch® system by Veridex (now Janssen Diagnostics, LLC, Raritan, NJ, USA) as well as its approval by the US FDA [3] in 2004 paved the way for widespread clinical assessment of the number of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) as a prognostic diagnostic tool. The technology is based on enumeration of cells expressing the epithelial marker EpCAM and excludes cells positive for the hematopoietic cell surface marker CD45. The number of EpCAM+


/CD45- cells correlate with


prognosis and are being used to monitor the response to chemotherapy in metastatic breast [4], prostate [5] and colorectal cancer [6]. This information can be used to spare cancer patients who are not responding to therapy the burden of adverse effects [7,8]. Moreover, CTCs harbor the potential to provide tumor- specific molecular information that can guide chemotherapy and targeted therapies in a personalized medicine approach. In recent years, a number of new technologies have been introduced that exploit biological and physical properties of CTCs apart from EpCAM as a surface marker. The dependence of CTC isolation on EpCAM expression may lead to an underestimation of the actual number of CTCs by missing tumor cells that underwent epithelial-to- mesenchymal transition (EMT). EMT is considered to be an event associated with metastasis and adoption of a stem cell phenotype by tumor cells [9,10]. It remains to be elucidated though, whether and how the number and phenotype of EpCAM negative/EMT marker positive CTCs correlate to disease progression [11].


Access this article at:


www.oncology-central.com/2016/06/27/potential-circulating-tumor-cells- blood-based-biomarkers-cancer-liquid-biopsy


Pharmacogenomics


Department of Tumour Biology, University Medical Center Hamburg- Eppendorf, 20246 Hamburg, Germany


13


www.oncology-central.com


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14