Liquid biopsy for the assessment of adrenal cancer heterogeneity: where do we stand?

Abstract

Almost 10 years have passed since the first attempts of liquid biopsy aimed at the characterisation of tumor cells present in the bloodstream from a regular sample of peripheral blood were performed. Liquid biopsy has been used to characterise tumor heterogeneity in various types of solid tumors including adrenocortical carcinoma. The development of molecular biology, genetics, and methodological advances such as digital PCR and next-generation sequencing allowed us to use besides circulating tumor cells a variety of circulating cell-free nucleic acids, DNAs, RNAs and microRNAs secreted by tumors into blood and other body fluids as specific molecular markers. These markers are used for diagnosis, to check tumor development, selecting efficient therapies, therapy monitoring and even possess prognostic power. In adrenocortical carcinoma, there are some studies reporting analysis of circulating tumor cells, circulating cell free DNA and microRNAs for assessing tumor heterogeneity. Among microRNAs, hsa-miR-483-5p seems to be the most important player. Combined with other microRNAs like hsa-miR-195, their expression correlates with recurrence-free survival. Most studies support the applicability of liquid biopsy for assessing temporal tumor heterogeneity (i.e. tumor progression) in adrenocortical cancer. In this mini-review, the available findings of liquid biopsy for assessing tumor heterogeneity in adrenocortical cancer are presented.

Keywords: Adrenocortical cancer; circulating cell-free DNA; circulating tumor cell; liquid biopsy; microRNA; temporal heterogeneity.

Fig. 1

Expression of hsa-miR-483-5p measured by RT-qPCR before and after selective arterial embolization treatment of a huge adrenocortical cancer. Normalized to the reference gene hsa-miR-16. Results are represented by –dCT (cycle threshold). The clinical features of the case have been presented in [72]