New approaches for precise response evaluation in hepatocellular carcinoma

Area of Science:

• Oncology
• Medical Imaging

Background:

• Conventional tumor burden assessments (e.g., World Health Organization criteria, Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors) struggle to differentiate viable tumor from non-viable tissue with modern therapies.
• Increasing use of cytostatic and targeted biologic agents necessitates improved methods for assessing therapeutic response.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review conventional and novel approaches for assessing tumor burden.
• To highlight the potential of functional imaging biomarkers for quantitative evaluation of therapeutic response.

Main Methods:

• Discussion of conventional morphologic tumor burden assessments.
• Exploration of emerging quantitative biomarkers, including metabolic and functional imaging techniques.
• Review of challenges in standardization and validation of new methods.

Main Results:

• Functional tumor burden analyses show promise due to their ability to detect biological changes earlier than morphological shifts.
• Targeted and locoregional therapies can induce early biological alterations detectable by functional imaging.
• Some novel functional imaging biomarkers require further standardization and validation.

Conclusions:

• Functional imaging biomarkers are crucial for quantitative assessment of therapeutic response in cancer management.
• These advanced techniques offer potential for more tailored patient therapies.
• Further validation and standardization are needed for widespread clinical adoption of novel functional imaging approaches.