Abstract
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the main cancer-related causes of death worldwide. Thus, there is a constant search for improvement in screening, diagnosis, and treatment strategies to improve the prognosis of this malignancy. The identification of useful biomarkers for surveillance and early HCC diagnosis is still deficient, with available serum biomarkers showing low sensitivity and heterogeneous specificity despite different cut-off points, even when assessed longitudinally, or with a combination of serum biomarkers. In contrast, HCC biomarkers used for prognostic (when associated with clinical outcomes) or predictive purposes (when associated with treatment response) may have an increased clinical role in the near future. Furthermore, some serum biomarkers are already implicated as a treatment selection tool, whether to provide access to certain therapies or to assess clinical benefit after treatment. In the present review we will discuss the clinical utility and foreseen future of HCC biomarkers implicated in surveillance, diagnosis, prognosis, and post-treatment assessment.
Highlights
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is nowadays one of the most frequent malignancies and a leading cancer-related cause of death worldwide [1,2]
We describe HCC serum and tissue biomarkers focusing on their clinical utility upon HCC surveillance, early diagnosis, prognosis, and post-treatment assessment
Other tumor biomarkers have been proposed such as osteopontin (OPN), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), angiopoietin 2 (ANG-2), Golgi protein 73 (Gp-73), insulin growth factor-1 (IGF-1), hepatic growth factor (HGF), Glypican-3 and c-MET among others
Summary
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is nowadays one of the most frequent malignancies and a leading cancer-related cause of death worldwide [1,2]. Some improvements in the therapeutic approach have been achieved for early and for advanced HCC stages. There has not been a significant clinical improvement in HCC biomarkers for surveillance and early diagnosis. Different serum or tissue biomarkers have already been studied, their clinical utility has not been widely accepted. There is a huge amount of publications with different and heterogeneous cut-offs with corresponding sensitivities and specificities. Most of these biomarkers have been associated with poor prognosis, either in early or advanced HCC. We describe HCC serum and tissue biomarkers focusing on their clinical utility upon HCC surveillance, early diagnosis, prognosis, and post-treatment assessment
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