Prognostic Gene Signatures for Hepatocellular Carcinoma: What Are We Measuring?

Excerpt

In this issue of Annals of Surgical Oncology, Lim et al. 1 report on prognostic gene expression signatures from tumor and nontumor liver tissues from hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients who underwent surgical resection at a single institution in Korea. The signatures were developed from a set of patients with relatively early stage diseases, and then evaluated in an independent validation cohort of patients with more advanced stage diseases. The authors report that their gene signature derived from the tumor tissues and not their gene signature from the nontumor tissue accurately predicted disease-free survival in the validation cohort. Their findings are consistent with previously published data suggesting that tumor-derived molecular information is more prognostic in advanced stage HCC, whereas nontumor liver-derived molecular information is more prognostic in earlier stage HCC.2‐4 …