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©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Oncol. Nov 15, 2025; 17(11): 113431
Published online Nov 15, 2025. doi: 10.4251/wjgo.v17.i11.113431
Published online Nov 15, 2025. doi: 10.4251/wjgo.v17.i11.113431
Folate receptor-positive circulating tumor cells might function as potential biomarkers for hepatocellular carcinoma
Zun-Yi Zhang, Jun-Jie Liu, Wei Zhang, Hepatic Surgery Center, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430030, Hubei Province, China
Mi Zhou, Department of Nursing, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430030, Hubei Province, China
Co-first authors: Zun-Yi Zhang and Mi Zhou.
Author contributions: Zhang ZY performed the majority of the writing and prepared the table; Zhou M prepared the figure; Liu JJ and Zhang W designed the outline of this paper; Zhang ZY and Zhou M contributed equally to this manuscript and are co-first authors. All author approval the final manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of Tongji Hospital (Approval No. TJ-IRB202502081). All procedures were performed in accordance with the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki.
Informed consent statement: This was a retrospective study and was approved by the Ethics Committee of Tongji Hospital. Written informed consent was not obtained from the participants in this study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Data sharing statement: All the data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article.
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: Wei Zhang, Hepatic Surgery Center, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, No. 1095 Jiefang Road, Wuhan 430030, Hubei Province, China. weizhangtjh@hust.edu.cn
Received: August 26, 2025
Revised: September 14, 2025
Accepted: October 21, 2025
Published online: November 15, 2025
Processing time: 80 Days and 20.9 Hours
Revised: September 14, 2025
Accepted: October 21, 2025
Published online: November 15, 2025
Processing time: 80 Days and 20.9 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: Ligand-target polymerase chain reaction is a sensitive tool for quantifying folate receptor (FR)-positive circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients. FR + CTCs counts were correlated with macrovascular invasion, tumor size, tumor number, extrahepatic tumor stage and disease-free survival time after surgery in HCC patients. These findings could provide new insights for stratifying HCC patients and predicting the recurrence of HCC by quantifying FR + CTCs.