Non-invasive Monitoring of Cancer Progression

A special issue of Cancers (ISSN 2072-6694). This special issue belongs to the section "Cancer Biomarkers".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 August 2022) | Viewed by 10406

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
1. Division of Medicine, Hematology and Oncology, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3G 2M1, Canada
2. Department of Medicine, Jewish General Hospital, Montreal, QC H3G 2M1, Canada
Interests: lymphoma; biomarkers; genomics; clinical trials

Special Issue Information

Dear colleague,

Cancer is a clonal disease characterized by genomic heterogeneity. While the initiating events occur in a single cell, additional events bestow it with a survival advantage, giving rise to a progeny of cells with the same genomic footprint. Over time, these cells undergo clonal evolution and expansion under the selective pressure of genomic instability, immune surveillance and exposure to therapies. The accumulation of additional genomic events, for example, mutations, copy number alterations and translocations, as well as epigenetic changes, can be tracked by studying tumor biopsies over the course of therapy. The extensive characterization of tumor genomes in recent years has demonstrated that incurable cancer is not a single disease entity, but rather a family of related cells that can rapidly adapt to prevent cell death.

While much has been learned by studying cancer genomes from tumor tissue, minimally invasive strategies of monitoring the presence of tumor and tumor evolution are needed. Cancer cells and/or their DNA, referred to as circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), can be readily detected in peripheral blood. The presence of residual cancer cells, or minimal residual disease (MRD) after therapy is not only prognostic, but in some circumstances, can change clinical management. 

This Special Issue of Cancers will highlight the different approaches used in the non-invasive monitoring of cancer progression. 

Dr. Nathalie A. Johnson
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • cell free DNA
  • circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA)
  • minimal residual disease (MRD)
  • flow cytometry
  • next generation sequencing
  • single cell sequencing
  • clonal evolution
  • non-invasive monitoring
  • liquid biopsies

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

13 pages, 9694 KiB  
Article
Circulating Cell-Free DNA Reflects the Clonal Evolution of Breast Cancer Tumors
by Jouni Kujala, Jaana M. Hartikainen, Maria Tengström, Reijo Sironen, Päivi Auvinen, Veli-Matti Kosma and Arto Mannermaa
Cancers 2022, 14(5), 1332; https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers14051332 - 4 Mar 2022
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 7103
Abstract
Liquid biopsy of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) is proposed as a potential method for the early detection of breast cancer (BC) metastases and following the clonal evolution of BC. Though the use of liquid biopsy is a widely discussed topic in the field, only [...] Read more.
Liquid biopsy of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) is proposed as a potential method for the early detection of breast cancer (BC) metastases and following the clonal evolution of BC. Though the use of liquid biopsy is a widely discussed topic in the field, only a few studies have demonstrated such usage so far. We sequenced the DNA of matched primary tumor and metastatic sites together with the matched cfDNA samples from 18 Eastern Finnish BC patients and investigated how well cfDNA reflected the clonal evolution of BC interpreted from tumor DNA. On average, liquid biopsy detected 56.2 ± 7.2% of the somatic variants that were present either in the matched primary tumor or metastatic sites. Despite the high discordance observed between matched samples, liquid biopsy was found to reflect the clonal evolution of BC and identify novel driver variants and therapeutic targets absent from the tumor DNA. Tumor-specific somatic variants were detected in cfDNA at the time of diagnosis and 8.4 ± 2.4 months prior to detection of locoregional recurrence or distant metastases. Our results demonstrate that the sequencing of cfDNA may be used for the early detection of locoregional and distant BC metastases. Observed discordance between tumor DNA sequencing and liquid biopsy supports the parallel sequencing of cfDNA and tumor DNA to yield the most comprehensive overview for the genetic landscape of BC. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Non-invasive Monitoring of Cancer Progression)
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11 pages, 2513 KiB  
Article
Non-Invasive Monitoring of Increased Fibrotic Tissue and Hyaluronan Deposition in the Tumor Microenvironment in the Advanced Stages of Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma
by Ravneet Vohra, Yak-Nam Wang, Helena Son, Stephanie Totten, Akshit Arora, Adam Maxwell and Donghoon Lee
Cancers 2022, 14(4), 999; https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers14040999 - 16 Feb 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2566
Abstract
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas are characterized by a complex and robust tumor microenvironment (TME) consisting of fibrotic tissue, excessive levels of hyaluronan (HA), and immune cells. We utilized quantitative multi-parametric magnetic resonance imaging (mp-MRI) methods at 14 Tesla in a genetically engineered KPC ( [...] Read more.
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas are characterized by a complex and robust tumor microenvironment (TME) consisting of fibrotic tissue, excessive levels of hyaluronan (HA), and immune cells. We utilized quantitative multi-parametric magnetic resonance imaging (mp-MRI) methods at 14 Tesla in a genetically engineered KPC (KrasLSL-G12D/+, Trp53LSL-R172H/+, Cre) mouse model to assess the complex TME in advanced stages of tumor development. The whole tumor, excluding cystic areas, was selected as the region of interest for data analysis and subsequent statistical analysis. Pearson correlation was used for statistical inference. There was a significant correlation between tumor volume and T2 (r = −0.66), magnetization transfer ratio (MTR) (r = 0.60), apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) (r = 0.48), and Glycosaminoglycan-chemical exchange saturation transfer (GagCEST) (r = 0.51). A subset of mice was randomly selected for histological analysis. There were positive correlations between tumor volume and fibrosis (0.92), and HA (r = 0.76); GagCEST and HA (r = 0.81); and MTR and CD31 (r = 0.48). We found a negative correlation between ADC low-b (perfusion) and Ki67 (r = −0.82). Strong correlations between mp-MRI and histology results suggest that mp-MRI can be used as a non-invasive tool to monitor the tumor microenvironment. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Non-invasive Monitoring of Cancer Progression)
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