Treatment Response Biomarkers in Hepatocellular Carcinoma: From Basic Science to Clinical Validation
A special issue of Cancers (ISSN 2072-6694). This special issue belongs to the section "Cancer Therapy".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2025 | Viewed by 522
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Despite recent developments in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) surveillance and treatment options, early diagnosis rates remain stable as incidence rates and cancer-related mortality continue to rise. At diagnosis, more than 80% of HCC is unresectable, with 40% being in the advanced stage. While advancements in liver-directed therapy (LDT), immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) regimens, and combination therapies continue to incrementally improve overall patient outcomes, the need to identify treatment responders and optimal treatment pathways has never been more apparent.
Research in HCC biomarkers for treatment response prognosis in both liver-directed and systemic therapy has been plagued by poor clinical translation. This has been partially driven by an overreliance on transcriptional databases (e.g., The Cancer Genome Atlas and Gene Expression Omnibus) as clinical validation for treatment outcomes and pathways to noninvasive biomarker assessment. There is a pressing need for treatment response biomarker discovery in prospective/observational, biospecimen-based cohorts with highly defined patient populations and treatment algorithms. This Special Issue will focus on prognostic biomarkers for treatment responders to LDT, ICI, and combination LDT-ICI therapies, which utilize basic science/translational research approaches with an emphasis on investigator-initiated, prospective, biospecimen-based validation studies.
Dr. Paul T. Thevenot
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- hepatocellular carcinoma
- prognostic biomarkers
- liver-directed therapy
- immune checkpoint inhibitors
- combination therapy
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