Circulating Tumor Cell Genome in Peripheral Blood From Hepatocellular Carcinoma Patients Under Radiotherapy

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a common cause of cancer mortality in Asia. Most patients were presented with advanced disease. Percutaneous ethanol injection, radiofrequency ablation, and transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE) are not considered as a curative treatment and have achieved very limited success in eradicating large HCC or tumors causing portal vein thrombosis. With the development of novel radiotherapy (RT) technique, RT can be safely given to patients with larger tumor or portal vein thrombosis. However, RT could achieve a tumor response rate of approximately 50 %. Currently, there was a paucity of studies regarding a quantitative biomarker to predict tumor response or forecast the outcome in advance. To optimize the therapeutic index, there is a need to seek effective biomarkers for personal medicine because pretreatment AFP is not always useful as a surrogate marker in some of the patients.

The present study is to investigate whether circulating tumor cell genome in peripheral blood can be used to predict RT response in HCC. We will use the blood sample from patients with locally advanced HCC receiving RT. By using next generation sequencing, We are going to explore the quantity and quality changes of DNAs and RNAs in the patient's serum or plasma. By this way, genomic expression in peripheral blood may play a key role in determining the optimal therapeutic strategies for HCC patients by predicting tumor response to RT.