According to statistics from the Globocan organization, the incidence and mortality rate from liver cancer ranks first among malignant diseases in Vietnam with more than 25,500 new cases in 2018. Currently, diagnosis of liver cancer is often in the late stage, leading to high mortality rate and the chance of surviving another 5 years is very low, less than 10%. This stems from the fact that we still lack effective and suitable tools for screening and early detection of tumors. The early screening strategy for liver cancer needs to focus on the group of people infected with hepatitis B virus, which is the group at highest risk for the development of liver cancer in Vietnam. Project “Application of advanced genomic technologies for early detection of hepatocellular carcinoma in patients infected with hepatis B virus” by Dr. Ngo Tat Trung, as PI, will propose new technological solutions to meet the above urgent needs.
To date, the spectrum of freely circulating DNA genetic lesions has been systematically described in patients with breast cancer, colon cancer, ovarian cancer, lung cancer… But with liver cancer, similar studies are still very fragmentary. Therefore, in this project, the research team deployed the application of new generation gene sequencing technologies to detect genetic lesions from the peripheral blood of liver cancer patients. This project aims to establish optimal diagnostic panels based on large data on genes obtained from next-generation gene sequencing methods for early detection of liver cancer in HBV-infected patients. The project also proposes solutions for cooperation with research centers and technology companies that can allow the exploitation of artificial intelligence systems for the purpose of data processing after new generation genetic sequencing to offer the optimal panels with high accuracy and sensitivity, thereby widely applying and ultimately improving patient care.
After more than half a year of implementing the project, the research team has established a panel to detect more than 100 mutations in more than 20 different genes that regulate the pathogenesis of primary hepatocellular cancer. In particular, the technique allows performing a liquid biopsy from peripheral blood, significantly reducing complications compared to traditional liver tissue biopsy.
