REVIEW article
Front. Oncol.
Sec. Gastrointestinal Cancers: Colorectal Cancer
Research Progress on Early Diagnostic Biomarkers and Liquid Biopsy Technologies for Colorectal Cancer: A Comprehensive Review
Provisionally accepted
- Haining People's Hospital, Jiaxing, China
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Colorectal cancer (CRC) remains one of the most prevalent and lethal malignancies globally, with its prognosis heavily dependent on the stage at diagnosis. Early detection (stages 0–I) significantly improves 5-year survival rates to over 90%, whereas advanced stages (III–IV) are associated with survival rates below 15%. However, current clinical screening tools (e.g., colonoscopy, fecal occult blood test) suffer from limitations such as invasiveness, poor patient compliance, or low sensitivity for early lesions. In recent years, liquid biopsy, characterized by non-invasiveness, real-time monitoring, and multi-analyte detection, has emerged as a promising strategy for CRC early diagnosis. This review systematically summarizes the latest advances in CRC early diagnostic biomarkers (including circulating tumor DNA, circulating tumor cells, extracellular vesicles, and protein/microbial markers) and corresponding liquid biopsy technologies. We critically discuss the clinical performance, advantages, limitations, and challenges of each biomarker/technology, evaluate evidence quality and field maturity, and provide perspectives on mechanistic insights and future directions for translating these innovations into clinical practice.
Keywords: biomarkers, circulating tumor cells, circulating tumor DNA, colorectal cancer, early diagnosis, extracellular vesicles, liquid biopsy
Received: 08 Oct 2025; Accepted: 08 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Shen, Wang and Zhang. 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: Wenjin Zhang
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