Topic: Liquid Biopsy in Hepatocellular Carcinoma: Prospects and Challenges in Precision Medicine

Dear Colleagues,

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) incidence has been rapidly increasing globally for decades and is one of the most lethal cancers. While treatable and curable at early stages, the majority of HCC cases are diagnosed at a late stage when survival is typically reduced to less than one year. One of the major risk factors for the development of HCC is liver cirrhosis, a chronic, incurable, and progressive fibrotic disease of the liver, resulting from fatty liver disease, alcoholism, and HBV or HCV infection. The lack of a diagnostic for earlier detection of pre-symptomatic HCC means that the majority of all HCC cases are only diagnosed when a patient shows up with symptoms at an advanced stage. Unfortunately, at this, frequently inoperable, stage of the spread of disease no cure is possible. Consequently, the key to improving the survival of patients with HCC is 1) earlier detection before symptoms occur and before cancer becomes metastatic, 2) improved differential diagnosis and staging, 3) better prediction of response to therapy/surgery/transplantation, 4) better prediction and monitoring of cancer recurrence, and 5) improved prognosis of progression-free and overall survival outcome. The current diagnostic approaches for HCC can only be achieved by costly, invasive liver biopsy or imaging. Recent advances in omics technologies and liquid biopsies provide novel tools to identify DNA, RNA, protein, metabolite, and lipid biomarkers and develop non-invasive diagnostics for HCC that are promising to transform diagnosis, prognosis, and prediction of HCC in the not-so-distant future. Liquid biopsy-based diagnostics are anticipated to pave the way for a precision medicine approach that will improve individualized patient management and improve survival of patients with HCC.

This Special Issue, titled “Liquid Biopsy in Hepatocellular Carcinoma: Prospects and Challenges in Precision Medicine”, will highlight and disseminate the latest cutting-edge and innovative developments and findings of this rapidly emerging liquid biopsy research field and its applications for HCC diagnostics and precision medicine. Suggested themes to be covered will include the strengths and limitations of current liquid biopsy technologies in the context of HCC, translational and clinical applications of liquid biopsies in the setting of HCC, the next generation of innovation in omics platforms for improving liquid biopsy analysis, and the utility and application of multi-omics liquid biopsy for precision medicine, biomarker discovery, diagnostic development, and drug discovery in HCC.

For this thematic collection, we cordially invite investigators to contribute high-quality original research and review articles that cover any relevant topic in state-of-the-art liquid biopsy of HCC topics and future perspectives of liquid biopsies for advancing precision medicine in HCC.

I look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Towia Libermann
Guest Editor

Topics
1. Biomarkers for early detection;
2. Biomarkers for differential diagnosis;
3. Biomarkers predicting and monitoring recurrence;
4. Biomarkers predicting outcome;
5. Biomarkers predicting response to therapy;
6. Liquid biopsies;
7. Spatial omics;
8. Single cell analysis;
9. Exosomes and extracellular vesicles;
10. Cell free DNA;
11. Circulating tumor cells;
12. Multi-omics;

13. Proteomics;

14. Genomics;

15. Epigenetics;

16. Metabolomics;

17. protein quantitative trait locus;

18. Systems biology.

31 Jul 2024