Dr. Villanueva on Liquid Biopsy for HCC

Augusto Villanueva, MD, PhD, assistant professor, Icahn School of Medicine, discusses the potential of liquid biopsy to improve treatment for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

Most patients are diagnosed with HCC on the basis of imaging. Therefore, few tissue samples are available for testing, explains Villanueva. Liquid biopsy relies on molecular data from tumor components, mainly cell-free nucleic acids and circulating tumor cells, that are released into the bloodstream and are potential biomarkers for HCC.

Liquid biopsy could be useful to assist in the surveillance of patients at high risk for development of HCC so that these patients can be given curative therapies, but it could also eventually help identify which patients are candidates to receive specific systemic therapies.

Currently, no biomarkers are available to help guide clinical decision making; however, liquid biopsy could eventually help correlate specific mutations in a patient's DNA with the most appropriate systemic treatment for their disease and cancer stage.

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