CASE REPORT article
Front. Oncol.
Sec. Gastrointestinal Cancers: Hepato Pancreatic Biliary Cancers
Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fonc.2025.1608604
Molecular profiling of circulating tumor cells guides effective EGFR inhibitor treatment in advanced hepatocellular carcinoma: A case report
Provisionally accepted
- 1Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei, Taipei County, Taiwan
- 2Central Clinic and Hospital, Taipei City, Taiwan
- 3FullHope Biomedical Co., Ltd., New Taipei City, Taiwan
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Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) hold promise for use in personalized medicine for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Their abundance and molecular characteristics may predict disease prognosis and could be used to monitor responses to treatment in specific types of cancers. The present case report described a 52-year-old woman with metastatic HCC with an extensive treatment history. The patient's CTCs demonstrated EGFR surface mutations, specifically, an EGFR exon 19 deletion and an L858R mutation. Based on this finding, the patient's metastatic lung lesions were treated with an EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor-based regimen, which achieved a partial response that was confirmed using the Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (version 1.1). Notably, the patient benefited from this therapy regimen for a period of 14 months. The progression of precision medicine in HCC has been hampered by difficulties in identifying cancer driver genes and the limited utilization of histological diagnosis. The findings of the present study suggest that molecular analysis of CTCs may have the potential to guide personalized HCC treatment strategies in the future.
Keywords: Hepatocellular Carcinoma, circulating tumor cells, egfr inhibitor, case report, Precision diagnosis
Received: 09 Apr 2025; Accepted: 03 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Chiu, CHEN, Chao and Lee. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jan-Mou Lee, FullHope Biomedical Co., Ltd., New Taipei City, Taiwan
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