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Review
. 2021 Jan 28:12:634642.
doi: 10.3389/fgene.2021.634642. eCollection 2021.

Clinical Perspectives on Liquid Biopsy in Metastatic Colorectal Cancer

Wei Gao  1 , Yigui Chen  1 , Jianwei Yang  1 , Changhua Zhuo  2 , Sha Huang  1 , Hui Zhang  3 , Yi Shi  4
Affiliations
Review

Clinical Perspectives on Liquid Biopsy in Metastatic Colorectal Cancer

Wei Gao et al. Front Genet. .

Abstract

Liquid biopsy, which generally refers to the analysis of biological components such as circulating nuclear acids and circulating tumor cells in body fluids, particularly in peripheral blood, has shown good capacity to overcome several limitations faced by conventional tissue biopsies. Emerging evidence in recent decades has confirmed the promising role of liquid biopsy in the clinical management of various cancers, including colorectal cancer, which is one of the most prevalent cancers and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. Despite the challenges and poor clinical outcomes, patients with metastatic colorectal cancer can expect potential clinical benefits with liquid biopsy. Therefore, in this review, we focus on the clinical prospects of liquid biopsy in metastatic colorectal cancer, specifically with regard to the recently discovered various biomarkers identified on liquid biopsy. These biomarkers have been shown to be potentially useful in multiple aspects of metastatic colorectal cancer, such as auxiliary diagnosis of metastasis, prognosis prediction, and monitoring of therapy response.

Keywords: biomarker; liquid biopsy; metastatic colorectal cancer; prediction; therapy response.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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