Identification of novel serum biomarkers in early-stage HCC patients.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common malignancies worldwide, and is the one of the few cancers in which a continued increase in incidence has been observed over several years. HCC associated with chronic liver disease evolves from precancerous lesion and early HCC to overt cancer, and identifying key molecules contributing to early stage HCC is an urgent need. α-Fetoprotein (AFP) is the best serum biomarker for diagnosis of HCC, but sensitivity is low, particularly in detection of early-stage HCC. Therefore, novel and reliable diagnostic biomarkers to complement AFP are needed to improve HCC diagnosis. We aim to determine transcriptome-based molecular signature of multistep hepatocarcinogenesis, and to identify novel serum biomarkers to diagnose early stage HCC patient. 15 Normal liver (NL), 20 Chronic hepatitis (CH), 10 Liver Cirrhosis (LC), 10 Dysplastic nodule (DN), 18 Early HCC (eHCC), and 45 Advanced HCC (avHCC) samples of 86 patients who underwent NGS RNA-Seq.