Dr. Villanueva on Eliminating Tumor Heterogeneity in Patients With HCC

Augusto Villanueva, MD, an assistant professor of the Division of Liver Diseases at the Tisch Cancer Institute of Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital, discusses mutations and gene signatures for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)—a topic he presented at the 2020 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.

The goal of the study is to better understand the characteristics of heterogeneous tumors, in order to option better genetic information when performing biopsies. The investigators found that in 30% of patients, there is significant heterogeneity at the level of gene expression, which has a significant connection to the composition of the tumor microenvironment, says Villaneuva.

There may be a solution to heterogeneous tumors, and Villaneuva explains that liquid biopsies may play a role in deriving novel biomarkers for HCC. It has been shown that analyzing plasma can make it easier to detect driver genes in patients with HCC. Similarly, it is known that circulating tumor cells and exosomes can be isolated. These both contain DNA, RNA, and microRNA that can be analyzed to provide biomarkers for HCC.