Non-Invasive Monitoring of Liver Cancer Recurrence Following Surgery and/or Transplant Using Circulating Tumour DNA Sequencing (ctDNA in HCC)

Summary:

HCC patients undergo either surgical resection or transplant for treatment. Many of the transplant HCC patients also undergo bridging therapies until transplantation such as microwave ablation. We are characterizing HCC primary tumours using whole genome sequencing (WGS) and when available the relapse tumours will also be sequenced using WGS. Briefly, we are evaluating the clinical validity of WGS for real-time clinical decision versus static tumour characteristics such as tumour size and number. We will also investigate the temporal heterogeneity of HCC tumours and their corresponding plasmas with a focus on clonal mutations/signatures and changes in variant allele frequency (VAF). In particular, we will classify clonal mutations based on their presence in primary tumor, recurrent tumor and/or plasma cell-free DNA (cfDNA).