A team of clinician-scientists and researchers from the National Cancer Centre Singapore (NCCS), Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research and global research partners, has found a causal link between the presence of oncofetal ecosystems (re-emergence of fetal programme/features driven by the tumor) in the primary liver cancer hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and cancer recurrence and response to immunotherapy. These game-changing findings, which pave the way for the use of oncofetal ecosystems as biomarkers to treat HCC, were recently published in Nature Cancer on 2 January 2024.
Liver cancer is the sixth most common cancer in the world and fourth most common cause of cancer deaths globally. In Singapore, it is the third most common cause of cancer deaths in males and fifth most common cause in females. HCC is usually diagnosed at a late stage, when prognosis is poor, highlighting a great clinical need to improve the understanding of HCC to better manage the disease.
An earlier breakthrough study, from the same research team, found that HCC cells adopt a foetal-like environment to escape immune surveillance and grow more aggressively. This provided novel insights into the processes that drive HCC development.
In their latest work published in Nature Cancer this year, the team built on their previous discovery and focused on understanding how the changes in the oncofoetal ecosystem, known as oncofoetal reprogramming, impacts HCC. Oncofoetal reprogramming causes the cancer cell environment in the liver to mimic certain aspects of cells