Liquid Biopsy: A Distinctive Approach to the Diagnosis and Prognosis of Cancer

Abstract

Cancer is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Over the past decades, the concept of precision cancer medicine has emerged as a novel approach in the field of oncology that aims to tailor the most effective treatment options to each individual cancer patient based on the genetic profile of the tumor of each individual patient. Recently, tissue biopsy has become an essential part of cancer care and is widely used to characterize the tumor. However, tissue biopsy techniques face different challenges due to their invasiveness, cost, time, and adversity in potential sampling due to tissue heterogeneity. To overcome these issues, a non-invasive approach has developed, which is known as liquid biopsy. It is a simple, fast, and worthwhile technique based on the analysis of circulating tumor DNA (which is a fraction of cfDNA), circulating tumor cells (CTCs), and other tumor-derived material in blood plasma. This review provides an overview of the concept of liquid biopsy and briefly discusses the role of ctDNA and CTC analysis as tools for early diagnosis and prognosis of cancer. In this review, we also speculate on the advantages of liquid biopsy as opposed to tissue biopsy and postulate that liquid biopsy may be a comprehensive approach to overcome the current limitations associated with costly, invasive, and time-consuming tissue biopsy.

Biosensing chips for cancer diagnosis and treatment: a new wave towards clinical innovation

“…The ability to successfully isolate cancer cells is an essential step in making liquid biopsy where cancer could be detected with a simple blood sample. This would eliminate the discomfort and cost of tissue biopsies, which use needles or surgical procedures [ 92 ]. Liquid biopsy could also be useful for tracking the effectiveness of chemotherapy over time and for detecting cancer in organs difficult to reach with traditional biopsy techniques, including the brain and lungs [ 93 , 94 ].…”

An Overview: Genetic Tumor Markers for Early Detection and Current Gene Therapy Strategies

“…In our previous article, we described how liquid biopsy can be used for the detection of genetic tumor markers for the early diagnosis and prognosis of cancer. 1 In this current article, we will review various nucleic acid based biomarkers for gene diagnosis and clinical methods for gene therapy to cure cancer disease. Cancer is a multi-factorial genetic disorder and a complex group of diseases in which cells grow out of control and do not die after being damaged or useless, and show immortality.…”

Platelet detection as a new liquid biopsy tool for human cancers

“…Liquid biopsy is always introduced for the analysis of circulating tumor cells (CTCs), circulating tumor DNA/RNA/ protein (ctDNA/ctRNA/ctProtein) and exosomes (Figure 1) (6)(7)(8)(9). It may provide the opportunity of detecting, analyzing, and monitoring cancer in various body effluents such as blood or urine instead of a fragment of cancer tissue.…”