Editorial
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Apr 21, 2022; 28(15): 1503-1507
Published online Apr 21, 2022. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v28.i15.1503
Liquid biopsy in colorectal cancer: No longer young, but not yet old
Giandomenico Roviello, Daniele Lavacchi, Lorenzo Antonuzzo, Martina Catalano, Enrico Mini
Giandomenico Roviello, Enrico Mini, Department of Health Sciences, Section of Clinical Pharmacology and Oncology, University of Florence, Firenze 50139, Italy
Daniele Lavacchi, Clinical Oncology Unit, AOU Careggi, Firenze 50134, Italy
Lorenzo Antonuzzo, Department of Experimental and Clinical Medicine, University of Firenze, Firenze 50134, Italy
Martina Catalano, School of Human Health Sciences, University of Florence, Florence 50134, Italy
Author contributions: All authors contributed to this paper; Roviello G designed the overall concept and outline of the manuscript; Antonuzzo L and Mini E contributed to the discussion and design of the manuscript; Lavacchi D and Catalano M contributed to the writing and editing of the manuscript, illustrations, and literature review.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors have nothing to disclose.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (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: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Giandomenico Roviello, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Health Sciences, Section of Clinical Pharmacology and Oncology, University of Florence, Viale Pieraccini, 6, Firenze 50139, Italy. giandomenico.roviello@unifi.it
Received: March 26, 2021
Peer-review started: March 26, 2021
First decision: June 14, 2021
Revised: July 12, 2021
Accepted: March 14, 2022
Article in press: March 14, 2022
Published online: April 21, 2022
Processing time: 384 Days and 9 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Liquid biopsy through analysis of biological components, such as circulating nuclear acids, circulating tumor cells, and more recently exosomes in body fluids, has shown good capacity to overcome several limitations faced by conventional tissue biopsies, in particular invasiveness and unrepeatability. Liquid biopsy has shown significant results in clinical applications in different types of cancer, especially colorectal cancer (CRC). Indeed, liquid biopsy can be used to detect CRC at an early stage, make treatment decisions, monitor response to treatment, predict relapses and metastases, reveal tumor heterogeneity, and detect minimal residual disease.