Copyright
©The Author(s) 2021. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
Combination of squamous cell carcinoma antigen immunocomplex and alpha-fetoprotein in mid- and long-term prediction of hepatocellular carcinoma among cirrhotic patients
Antonio Gil-Gómez, Ángela Rojas, Chang-Hai Liu, Rocio Gallego-Duran, Rocio Muñoz-Hernandez, Giorgio Fassina, Patrizia Pontisso, Javier Ampuero, Manuel Romero-Gómez
Antonio Gil-Gómez, Ángela Rojas, Rocio Gallego-Duran, Rocio Muñoz-Hernandez, Javier Ampuero, Manuel Romero-Gómez, SeLiver Group, Institute of Biomedicine of Seville, Seville 41013, Spain
Antonio Gil-Gómez, Ángela Rojas, Rocio Gallego-Duran, Rocio Muñoz-Hernandez, Javier Ampuero, Manuel Romero-Gómez, CIBERehd, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid 28029, Spain
Antonio Gil-Gómez, Mucosal Immunity Lab, IRCCS Humanitas Research Hospital, Milan 20089, Italy
Chang-Hai Liu, Center of Infectious Diseases, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu 610017, Sichuan Province, China
Chang-Hai Liu, State Key Laboratory of Biotherapy and Center of Infectious Diseases, West China Hospital, Chengdu 610017, Sichuan Province, China
Giorgio Fassina, Life Biotechnology, Padua University, Venice 30175, Italy
Patrizia Pontisso, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Padova, Padova 35123, Italy
Javier Ampuero, Manuel Romero-Gómez, UCM Digestive Diseases, Virgen del Rocío University Hospital, Seville 41014, Spain
Author contributions: Gil-Gómez A led the formal analysis and writing-original draft; Rojas A equally contributed to the data curation and supported the formal analysis; Liu CH supported formal analysis and writing-original draft; Gallego-Duran R equally contributed to data curation, and led the resources; Muñoz-Hernandez R supported the data curation and validation; Fassina G and Pontisso P equally contributed to the validation; Ampuero J supported the conceptualization, led the supervision, and equally contributed to the writing-review and editing; Romero-Gómez M led the conceptualization, and equally contributed to the writing-review and editing.
Supported by Sara Borrell postdoctoral fellowships from Instituto de Salud Carlos III to support Ángela Rojas postdoctoral contract; Consejería de Salud y Familias, Junta de Andalucía supporting Antonio Gil-Gómez contract; PI19/01404 Grant from Spanish Ministry of Economy, Innovation and Competition, the Instituto de Salud Carlos III; PI19/00589/Spanish Ministry of Economy, Innovation and Competition, the Instituto de Salud Carlos III; and the Xeptagen, Italy, provided the ELISA kits for the measurements of SCCA-IgM. None of the founders had a role in the design, writing or interpretation of the study.
Institutional review board statement: Human samples were collected after obtaining a signed informed consent as approved by the Ethical Committee both hospitals (C330020).
Informed consent statement: Human samples were collected after obtaining a signed informed consent.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Data sharing statement: The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy reasons.
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: Manuel Romero-Gómez, MD, Full Professor, SeLiver Group, Institute of Biomedicine of Seville, Avda. Manuel Siurot sn, Seville 41013, Spain. mromerogomez@us.es
Received: April 22, 2021
Peer-review started: April 22, 2021
First decision: June 13, 2021
Revised: June 27, 2021
Accepted: December 8, 2021
Article in press: December 8, 2021
Published online: December 28, 2021
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background
Early diagnosis or prediction of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) development would have a major impact on the prognosis of patients under surveillance.
Research motivation
Current screening programs for HCC are far from being satisfactory due to patient- and provider-related factors. Individualizing the program according to the risk of HCC development could be a strategy to overcome these challenges in the era of precision medicine.
Research objectives
This study aimed to evaluate non-invasive biomarkers in the prediction of HCC among patients with cirrhosis.
Research methods
Retrospective cohort study analyzing the association of baseline serum biomarkers with the development of HCC in the mid- and long-term in cirrhotic patients of different etiologies.
Research results
Squamous cell carcinoma antigen immunocomplex (SCCA-IgM) serum levels are associated to the development of HCC at mid- long-term, independently of previously known predictors.
Research conclusions
A predictive model based on the combination of alpha-fetoprotein and SCCA-IgM levels could provide a new HCC screening method, optimizing surveillance for individual patients, especially for cirrhotic patients allocated in the low-risk group.
Research perspectives
Tailored HCC surveillance assessed by non-invasive biomarkers in individual patients would help to better allocate the resources to those patients at higher risk of developing HCC.
