Biomarker studies on radiotherapy to hepatocellular carcinoma

Radiotherapy (RT) has been gradually integrated into the multimodality treatment for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The various patterns of failure in HCC patients undergoing RT drive the need of effective biomarkers to guide treatment decisions. Limited numbers of biomarkers have been investigated in HCC, with even fewer of them for patients treated by RT. Serum or plasma biomarkers measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay were the most common practice. Of particular interest are those biomarkers that are detectable early in the course of radiotherapy which correlated with ultimate clinical outcome. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is increasingly used to evaluate the imaging pattern indicative of disease control following RT. Positron emission tomography shows that pre-RT standard uptake values associate with various types of recurrence after treatment. Proximity ligation assay (PLA) is evolving with the unique features of dual-probe identification, ligation and amplification to allow the small volume of serum/plasma samples for evaluating multiple biomarkers. We demonstrate the screening work of biomarkers by PLA with pre- and post-RT serum samples from HCC patients undergoing RT. Efforts are being made to search for the potential biomarkers for HCC patients treated by RT.