Editorial
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2018. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Sep 21, 2018; 24(35): 3974-3979
Published online Sep 21, 2018. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v24.i35.3974
Biomarkers for hepatocellular carcinoma: What’s new on the horizon?
Matthias Ocker
Matthias Ocker, Department of Translational Medicine Oncology, Bayer AG, Berlin 13353, Germany
Matthias Ocker, Charité University Medicine Berlin, Berlin 10117, Germany
Author contributions: Ocker M solely contributed to the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.
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: Matthias Ocker, MD, Professor, Department of Translational Medicine Oncology, Bayer AG, Muellerstrasse 178, Berlin 13353, Germany. matthias.ocker@bayer.com
Telephone: +49-30-468194799 Fax: +49-30-468994799
Received: June 11, 2018
Peer-review started: June 12, 2018
First decision: July 6, 2018
Revised: July 29, 2018
Accepted: August 1, 2018
Article in press: August 1, 2018
Published online: September 21, 2018
Processing time: 100 Days and 18.4 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a heterogeneous disease with various underlying etiologies and an overall still poor prognosis. Biomarkers to identify optimal treatment for distinct patients are still lacking for HCC due to limited availability of biopsies. Novel treatment options, esp. immune checkpoint inhibitors, may need novel biomarker approaches and non-tissue based technologies might provide a solution to identify those biomarkers. In this article, the current status of biomarker identification for HCC is discussed.