Chapter 3 - Liquid biopsy as a new tool for diagnosis, monitoring, and personalized medicine in urogenital cancers

Abstract

Today, liquid biopsy has emerged as a new tool in person-cantered medicine and can open a new window for researchers and physicians to treat and diagnose diseases, especially cancer. Liquid biopsy means the use of body fluids instead of tissue sampling for diagnostic information. In urological cancers, circulating free DNA (cfDNA) in urine and blood, as well as circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and tumor cells vesicles including exosomes, can have diagnostic and therapeutic value. Various techniques are used to examine these liquid materials such as digital PCR (dPCR) and next generation sequencing (NGS) to analysis mutations and immune-magnetic capturing, filtration, centrifugation, or microfluidic separation have been created for the isolation of CTCs. We performed a literature search using google scholar/PubMed with keywords like “liquid biopsy,” “circulating tumor DNA,” “cell-free DNA,” “CTCs,” “biomarkers,” “prostate cancer,” “bladder cancer,” “renal cancer,” and “patient-oriented medicine.” Based on our review of articles that used liquid biopsy to diagnose and design treatment protocols for urological cancers, it can be concluded that specific biomarkers for bladder, kidney, prostate, and genital cancers have been obtained, but these markers need to be further studied to enter the clinical field.