A Look Behind the Paper: Glypican-3-targeted US Molecular Imaging of Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Editor's Note. This issue of Radiology: Imaging Cancer brings a new feature that we term "A Look Behind the Paper." We invite authors of selected manuscripts to provide more details about their research and the thought process that led to the final manuscript. In this inaugural Look Behind the Paper, Liang and Li and colleagues describe the motivation for the published research, any unexpected challenges they encountered, and future directions for their study developing biosynthetic gas vesicles to detect glypican-3 in hepatocellular carcinoma. Their description of the critical decision to switch the targeting molecule for glypican-3 from an RNA aptamer to a peptide helps readers understand the barriers researchers must overcome to move a project forward. We hope you enjoy the authors' description of their research goals. We look forward to bringing you more insights from A Look Behind the Paper in future issues of the journal.