Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2020. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Cases. Jun 6, 2020; 8(11): 2066-2080
Published online Jun 6, 2020. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v8.i11.2066
Tumor circulome in the liquid biopsies for digestive tract cancer diagnosis and prognosis
Long Chen, Yu Chen, Yuan-Ling Feng, Yan Zhu, Li-Quan Wang, Shen Hu, Pu Cheng
Long Chen, Department of Radiotherapy, Zhejiang Provincial People’s Hospital, People’s Hospital of Hangzhou Medical College, Hangzhou 310014, Zhejiang Province, China
Yu Chen, Department of Pediatric Surgery, Guangdong Women and Children Hospital, Guangzhou 511400, Guangdong Province, China
Yuan-Ling Feng, Li-Quan Wang, Shen Hu, Department of Obstetrics, The Second Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou 310052, Zhejiang Province, China
Yan Zhu, Department of Respiratory, Shulan Hospital, Hangzhou 310004, Zhejiang Province, China
Pu Cheng, Department of Gynecology, The Second Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou 310052, Zhejiang Province, China
Pu Cheng, Key Laboratory of Tumor Microenvironment and Immune Therapy of Zhejiang Province, Hangzhou 310052, Zhejiang Province, China
Author contributions: Chen L and Chen Y drafted the manuscript; Chen L, Chen Y, Feng YL, Zhu Y, Wang LQ, Hu S and Cheng P reviewed articles; Feng YL, Zhu Y and Wang LQ edited the manuscript; Hu S and Cheng P designed the study, edited and approved the final version of the manuscript.
Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 81902629.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflicts of interest in this work.
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: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Pu Cheng, PhD, Doctor, Department of Gynecology, The Second Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, No. 1511, Jianghong Road, Binjiang District, Hangzhou 310052, Zhejiang Province, China. drchengpu@zju.edu.cn
Received: January 21, 2020
Peer-review started: January 21, 2020
First decision: March 15, 2020
Revised: April 10, 2020
Accepted: April 29, 2020
Article in press: April 29, 2020
Published online: June 6, 2020
Abstract

Digestive tract cancer is one of the main diseases that endanger human health. At present, the early diagnosis of digestive tract tumors mainly depends on serology, imaging, endoscopy, and so on. Although tissue specimens are the gold standard for cancer diagnosis, with the rapid development of precision medicine in cancer, the demand for dynamic monitoring of tumor molecular characteristics has increased. Liquid biopsy involves the collection of body fluids via non-invasive approaches, and analyzes biological markers such as circulating tumor cells, circulating tumor DNA, circulating cell-free DNA, microRNAs, and exosomes. In recent years, liquid biopsy has become more and more important in the diagnosis and prognosis of cancer in clinical practice due to its convenience, non-invasiveness, high specificity and it overcomes temporal-spatial heterogeneity. Therefore, this review summarizes the current evidence on liquid biopsies in digestive tract cancers in relation to diagnosis and prognosis.

Keywords: Digestive tract cancer, Liquid biopsy, Tumor circulome, Tumor progression, Diagnosis, Prognosis

Core tip: Digestive tract cancers can be divided into several types. In this article, we reviewed the relevant research on liquid biopsies used for the diagnosis and prognosis of each type of cancer.