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Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Aug 21, 2017; 23(31): 5650-5668
Published online Aug 21, 2017. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v23.i31.5650
Liquid biopsy in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma: Circulating tumor cells and cell-free nucleic acids
Wataru Okajima, Shuhei Komatsu, Daisuke Ichikawa, Mahito Miyamae, Takuma Ohashi, Taisuke Imamura, Jun Kiuchi, Keiji Nishibeppu, Tomohiro Arita, Hirotaka Konishi, Atsushi Shiozaki, Ryo Morimura, Hisashi Ikoma, Kazuma Okamoto, Eigo Otsuji
Wataru Okajima, Shuhei Komatsu, Daisuke Ichikawa, Mahito Miyamae, Takuma Ohashi, Taisuke Imamura, Jun Kiuchi, Keiji Nishibeppu, Tomohiro Arita, Hirotaka Konishi, Atsushi Shiozaki, Ryo Morimura, Hisashi Ikoma, Kazuma Okamoto, Eigo Otsuji, Division of Digestive Surgery, Department of Surgery, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, Kyoto 602-8566, Japan
Author contributions: Okajima W and Komatsu S contributed equally to this work; Okajima W and Komatsu S wrote the manuscript; Ichikawa D and Otsuji E helped to draft the manuscript; Miyamae M, Ohashi T, Imamura T, Kiuchi J, Nishibeppu K, Arita T, Konishi H, Morimura R, Shiozaki A, Ikoma H and Okamoto K collected the literature.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflicts of interest to report.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix and study data are available from the corresponding author at skomatsu@koto.kpu-m.ac.jp (Shuhei Komatsu) under the permission of Shuhei Komatsu. Participants gave informed consent for data sharing. No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Shuhei Komatsu, MD, PhD, Division of Digestive Surgery, Department of Surgery, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, 465 Kajii-cho, Kawaramachihirokoji, Kamigyo-ku, Kyoto, 602-8566, Japan. skomatsu@koto.kpu-m.ac.jp
Telephone: +81-75-2515527 Fax: +81-75-2515522
Received: January 28, 2017
Peer-review started: February 8, 2017
First decision: March 3, 2017
Revised: April 14, 2017
Accepted: July 4, 2017
Article in press: July 4, 2017
Published online: August 21, 2017
Processing time: 202 Days and 16.6 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Accumulating evidence about circulating tumor cells and cell-free nucleic acids in the blood of cancer patients has suggested their potent clinical utilities as novel biomarker. This concept, so-called “liquid biopsy” is widely known as an alternative approach to cancer tissue biopsy. This method might facilitate a more sensitive diagnosis and better decision-making by obtaining genetic and epigenetic aberrations that are closely associated with cancer initiation and progression. In this article, we review recent developments based on the available literature on both circulating tumor cells and cell-free nucleic acids in cancer patients, especially focusing on Hepatocellular carcinoma.