Tool for Predicting Recurrence of Liver Cancer Developed

Predicting the likelihood for a recurrence of liver cancer just became possible, according to a study released October 15 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

According to the American Cancer Society, hepatocellular carcinoma (liver cancer) is one of the top three most deadly forms of cancer. The prognosis for cancers with a recurrence of liver cancer is usually poor. The new assessment tool developed by a team of scientists from around the glove could give doctors the ability to predict the likelihood for liver cancer reoccurrence, which could give physicians and patients entirely new therapies to consider.

Dr. Todd R. Golub at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology led the research. Stored samples of liver tissue from 307 cancer patients, some as old as 24 years, were studied, giving researchers historical data on which patients did, and did not, develop new cancers after the initial therapy. Golub is a researcher at both the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University.

Using a technique called microarray analysis, the researchers were able to rapidly analyze variables and interactions of hundreds of genes. Before the development of this new analytical tool, such studies were impossible, because the technique for storing tissue samples - soaking the samples in formaldehyde before sealing them in wax - fragmented the DNA within the cells.

The interdisciplinary team looked at 6,000 different genes in the tissue samples. By comparing historical data on patients, they were able to identify a combination of 186 genetic markers which indicated whether or not the patient was likely to have a recurrence of liver cancer.

What was important about the finding was that these markers were present in the tissue surrounding the tumor. "The fact that the predictive information comes not from the tumor but from surrounding tissue could offer important insights into the mechanism of liver cancer," Golub said in an interview with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which helped fund the research.

This so-called "field effect" indicates that some outside environmental factor, such as exposure to certain viruses and carcinogenic chemicals, have damaged the DNA in cells which have not begun to form tumors, but likely will develop into cancer.

Morris Sherman of the University of Toronto wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine that the findings "bring the possibility of individualized therapy for hepatocellular carcinoma one step closer."

Golub's collaborators were from New York, Tokyo, Milan, Bergen, and Barcelona.