Multi-analyte liquid biopsies for molecular pathway guided personalized treatment selection in advanced refractory cancers: A clinical utility pilot study

Exploring the clinical utility of liquid biopsy with cfDNA in cancer: A systematic review

Various tumor cells may exhibit different genetic or phenotypic characteristics. This phenomenon of cancer cells, known as Tumor Heterogeneity, is responsible for multiple cancer sites caused in a single patient through metastases. It is possible that the biopsy of the most accessible metastasis will not provide enough information to reexamine tumor features and make therapeutic recommendations. Liquid biopsy is a diagnostic technique that probes metastatic deposits from biofluids like peripheral blood for cell-free DNA (cfDNA)/circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) from cancer patients. This analysis provides researchers and oncologists a comprehensive insight into therapeutic targets and treatment resistance-causing gene alterations. Various studies have validated that cfDNA/ctDNA may be essential in tumor analysis, constituting the need for the identification of cancer cells that may reactivate and proliferate, causing the disease to reoccur. This detection is also called Minimal Residual Disease (MRD) and shares insights on the efficiency of the treatment regimen and if the cancer cells have developed resistance to a specific treatment regimen. In this review, the significance of cfDNA/ctDNA as a possible diagnostic, prognostic, or monitoring biomarker for solid tumors has been evaluated in recent studies, and its clinical relevance in routine cancer clinics in India has been reviewed.

Extracellular vesicles as a new frontier of diagnostic biomarkers in osteosarcoma diseases: a bibliometric and visualized study

The use of liquid biopsy in cancer research has grown exponentially, offering potential for early detection, treatment stratification, and monitoring residual disease and recurrence. Exosomes, released by cancer cells, contain tumor-derived materials and are stable in biofluids, making them valuable biomarkers for clinical evaluation. Bibliometric research on osteosarcoma (OS) and exosome-derived diagnostic biomarkers is scarce. Therefore, we aimed to conduct a bibliometric evaluation of studies on OS and exosome-derived biomarkers. Using the Web of Science Core Collection database, Microsoft Excel, the R "Bibliometrix" package, CiteSpace, and VOSviewer software, quantitative analyses of the country, author, annual publications, journals, institutions, and keywords of studies on exosome-derived biomarkers for OS from 1995 to 2023 were performed. High-quality records (average citation rate ≥ 10/year) were filtered. The corresponding authors were mainly from China, the USA, Australia, and Canada. The University of Kansas Medical Center, National Cancer Center, Japan, and University of Kansas were major institutions, with limited cooperation reported by the University of Kansas Medical Center. Keyword analysis revealed a shift from cancer progression to mesenchymal stem cells, exosome expression, biogenesis, and prognostic biomarkers. Qualitative analysis highlighted exosome cargo, including miRNAs, circRNAs, lncRNAs, and proteins, as potential diagnostic OS biomarkers. This research emphasizes the rapid enhancement of exosomes as a diagnostic frontier, offering guidance for the clinical application of exosome-based liquid biopsy in OS, contributing to the evolving landscape of cancer diagnosis.