Finding the seed of recurrence: Hepatocellular carcinoma circulating tumor cells and their potential to drive the surgical treatment.

ABSTRACT: The treatment for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) relies on liver resection, which is, however, burdened by a high rate of recurrence after surgery, up to 60% at 5 years. No pre-operative tools are currently available to assess the recurrence risk tailored to every single patient. Recently liquid biopsy has shown interesting results in diagnosis, prognosis and treatment allocation strategies in other types of cancers, since its ability to identify circulating tumor cells (CTCs) derived from the primary tumor. Those cells were advocated to be responsible for the majority of cases of recurrence and cancer-related deaths for HCC. In fact, after being modified by the epithelial-mesenchymal transition, CTCs circulate as "seeds" in peripheral blood, then reach the target organ as dormant cells wh

SUBMITTER: Carissimi F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8462072 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature