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Review
. 2024 Dec 2;9(1):336.
doi: 10.1038/s41392-024-02021-w.

Liquid biopsy in cancer current: status, challenges and future prospects

Liwei Ma #  1   2 , Huiling Guo #  3   4 , Yunxiang Zhao  5 , Zhibo Liu  3   4 , Chenran Wang  3   4 , Jiahao Bu  5 , Ting Sun  6   7 , Jianwei Wei  8
Affiliations
Review

Liquid biopsy in cancer current: status, challenges and future prospects

Liwei Ma et al. Signal Transduct Target Ther. .

Abstract

Cancer has a high mortality rate across the globe, and tissue biopsy remains the gold standard for tumor diagnosis due to its high level of laboratory standardization, good consistency of results, relatively stable samples, and high accuracy of results. However, there are still many limitations and drawbacks in the application of tissue biopsy in tumor. The emergence of liquid biopsy provides new ideas for early diagnosis and prognosis of tumor. Compared with tissue biopsy, liquid biopsy has many advantages in the diagnosis and treatment of various types of cancer, including non-invasive, quickly and so on. Currently, the application of liquid biopsy in tumor detection has received widely attention. It is now undergoing rapid progress, and it holds significant potential for future applications. Around now, liquid biopsies encompass several components such as circulating tumor cells, circulating tumor DNA, exosomes, microRNA, circulating RNA, tumor platelets, and tumor endothelial cells. In addition, advances in the identification of liquid biopsy indicators have significantly enhanced the possibility of utilizing liquid biopsies in clinical settings. In this review, we will discuss the application, advantages and challenges of liquid biopsy in some common tumors from the perspective of diverse systems of tumors, and look forward to its future development prospects in the field of cancer diagnosis and treatment.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
History of liquid biopsy. Timeline of the research history and milestone events of study on liquid biopsy. CTCs Circulating tumor cells, ctDNA Circulating tumor DNA, FDA Food and Drug Administration. Created with BioRender.com
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Flowchart of applying liquid biopsy in cancers. Applications of liquid biopsies and types of biomarkers for liquid biopsies. Created with BioRender.com
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Liquid biopsy markers—CTCs. The metastasis, separation detection and application of CTCs. Created with BioRender.com
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Liquid biopsy markers—ctDNA. CtDNA is usually actively secreted by tumor cells or released into the circulatory system during the apoptosis or necrosis of tumor cells. Mutations and methylation of ctDNA are often used as detection indicators. Created with BioRender.com
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Liquid biopsy markers – exosome. a The formation process of exosomes and the main detection contents such as RNA, DNA, miRNA, proteins, and metabolite. b The role of exosome in tumor progression. Created with BioRender.com
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
Liquid biopsy markers—TEPs. The formation process and the detection of TEPs. CTC circulating tumor cell, EV extracellular vehicle, PLT platelet, TEPs tumor educated-platelets. Created with BioRender.com
Fig. 7
Fig. 7
Liquid biopsy markers—RNA. a Types of ncRNA. b The role of ncRNA. c The detection methods for ncRNA. Created with BioRender.com
Fig. 8
Fig. 8
Liquid biopsy biomarkers of systemic tumors. Application of liquid biopsy in tumors of different systems and some examples of biomarkers. Created with BioRender.com
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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