Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Hepatol. Jan 8, 2017; 9(1): 1-17
Published online Jan 8, 2017. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v9.i1.1
Disease monitoring of hepatocellular carcinoma through metabolomics
Asem I Fitian, Roniel Cabrera
Asem I Fitian, School of Medicine, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23298, United States
Roniel Cabrera, Department of Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, Section of Hepatobiliary Diseases, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32610, United States
Author contributions: Fitian AI and Cabrera R conceptualized the study, searched and reviewed the literature, and drafted the manuscript; both authors reviewed and approved the final version of the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Authors declare no conflicts of interest for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (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: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Roniel Cabrera, MD, MS, Department of Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, Section of Hepatobiliary Diseases, University of Florida, 1600 SW Archer Rd M440, Gainesville, FL 32610, United States. roniel.cabrera@medicine.ufl.edu
Telephone: +1-352-2739500 Fax: +1-352-3927393
Received: June 30, 2016
Peer-review started: June 30, 2016
First decision: August 18, 2016
Revised: September 20, 2016
Accepted: October 22, 2016
Article in press: October 24, 2016
Published online: January 8, 2017
Core Tip

Core tip: The high-throughput, validated nature of metabolomics makes it an ideal methodology for rapidly identifying the global metabolic alterations associated with hepatocarcinogenesis - alterations that not only enhance our understanding of the metabolic underpinnings of cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), but that can be leveraged to improve HCC diagnostic, therapeutic, and disease monitoring efficacy. Indeed, contemporary HCC metabolomics works time and again demonstrate this promise that metabolomics platforms hold in serving as standalone non-invasive HCC diagnostic and disease monitoring modalities.