Integrating Liquid Biopsy and Genomic Analysis for Personalized Urologic Cancer Care: From Diagnosis to Treatment Monitoring

Urologic cancers, which include prostate, bladder, and kidney malignancies, pose significant global health challenges due to their high rates of morbidity and mortality. Traditional diagnostic and monitoring approaches often depend on invasive methods, which present certain risks and may not entirely depict the molecular heterogeneity inherent in these diseases. Recent advancements in liquid biopsy technologies have provided novel opportunities to detect, characterize, and monitor urologic cancers through minimally invasive means. Elements such as circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), circulating tumor cells (CTCs), extracellular vesicles, and other blood-based biomarkers are now accessible windows into tumor biology that were previously unattainable without tissue sampling. Alongside this, next-generation sequencing and genomic analysis techniques have greatly enhanced our understanding of the genetic framework of urologic cancers, exposing actionable mutations, resistance mechanisms, and prognostic indicators that are instrumental in driving research forward.

This Research Topic aims to explore the integration of liquid biopsy approaches, inclusive of blood-based biomarkers and urinary tumor DNA (utDNA), with comprehensive genomic analysis to advance personalized medicine paradigms in urologic oncology. We seek to highlight innovative research that bridges these complementary technologies to facilitate improvements in early detection, diagnostic accuracy, therapeutic decision-making, treatment response monitoring, minimal residual disease detection, and recurrence prediction in urologic cancers. By gathering multidisciplinary insights from urologists, oncologists, molecular biologists, bioinformaticians, and clinical researchers, we aim to accelerate the translation of these technologies into clinical settings and establish evidence-based strategies for their application in personalized urologic cancer care.

To gather further insights in personalized urologic cancer care, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:

- Novel liquid biopsy techniques for the detection and characterization of urologic cancers, encompassing advances in ctDNA, CTCs, exosomes, and utDNA isolation and analysis.
- Integration of liquid biopsy findings with genomic profiling for improved diagnostic accuracy and classification of urologic malignancies.
- Applications of integrated approaches for risk stratification and treatment selection in prostate, bladder, and kidney cancers.
- Longitudinal monitoring of treatment response and resistance mechanisms using serial liquid biopsies and genomic analysis.
- Detection of minimal residual disease and early recurrence prediction using liquid biopsy-based surveillance strategies.
- Clinical validation studies demonstrating the utility of combined approaches in routine urologic cancer care.

Please note the following disclosures for Dr. Jeanny B. Aragon-Ching:
- Dr. Aragon-Ching reports Speakers' Bureau Fees from BMS, Pfizer/Astellas, EMD Serono, Merck KgA.
- Dr. Aragon-Ching reports Advisory Board Fees from Pfizer, Astellas, Novartis, AZD, EMD Serono, Merck, Merck KgA, Bayer.
- Dr. Aragon-Ching declares no conflict of interest regarding the editorial capacity of this Frontiers in Oncology collection.
Dear Dr. Yajima and Dr. Urabe declare no conflict of interest.


Please note: manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics or computational analysis of public genomic or transcriptomic databases, which are not accompanied by validation (independent cohort or biological validation in vitro or in vivo), are out of scope for this section and will not be accepted as part of this Research Topic.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Liquid biopsy, genomic analysis, circulating tumor DNA, personalized medicine, precision oncology

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.