Liquid biopsy in endometrial cancer

Abstract

Liquid biopsy (LB) is an emerging tool for the evaluation of relapse in several cancers and nowadays is used in lung cancer for primary detection and molecular characterization when tumoral tissue is not available. It can represent an innovative biospecimen for the screening, diagnosis, and monitoring of all types of cancer and for monitoring of therapeutic efficacy. LB includes several biofluids such as blood, urine, peritoneal fluid/lavage, and analytes (circulating tumor cells, circulating tumor DNA, long noncoding RNA, microRNA, vesicles, mRNA, and protein) that can play different roles in diagnosis, prognosis, and patient management as well as in the improvement of the knowledge of cancer evolution. Endometrial cancer (EC) is a tumor usually detected at low stage with a good prognosis, but few low risk cases, unexpectedly, can evolve to bad prognosis. Up to now, no molecular target exists to treat advanced stage or to define the evolution of low stage EC. This review focuses on how the LB may help in the management and characterization of patients affected by EC.

Keywords

Endometrial cancer / liquid biopsy / long noncoding RNA / circular RNA / circulating tumor DNA / circulating tumor cell / extracellular vesicle / peritoneal lavage

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