Circulating Tumor Cells for Hepatocellular Carcinoma (CTCs for HCC)

Background:The lack of tumor tissue for drug target and biomarker studies significantly limit the development of novel treatment for advanced HCC. In recent years, circulating tumor cells (CTCs) have been shown to be important prognostic biomarkers of overall survival for patients with breast, prostate, and colorectal cancer after anti-cancer therapy.

Methods and Materials:This project plans to enroll 50 HCC patients who receive curative surgery or radiofrequency ablation therapy, 50 patients who receive trans-arterial chemoembolization, and 50 patients who receive systemic therapy at National Taiwan University Hospital in 24 months for CTCs analysis. The eligible patients will receive blood tests before and after anti-cancer therapy. The blood samples will be separated to blood cells and plasma. Blood cells will be used for isolation and enumeration of CTCs. Plasma will be used to extract DNA to measure molecular aberration (gene mutations related to hepatocarcinogenesis or response of HCC cells to molecular targeted therapy)

1. to explore the correlation between CTCs numbers and other clinical characteristics in HCC patients with different stages;
2. to compare the patterns of molecular aberrations between CTC and HCC tumor tissue in HCC patients who have archival tumor tissue available; and
3. to measure the changes of CTCs numbers and molecular aberrations in HCC patients before and after molecular targeted therapy.