Precision medicine for hepatocellular carcinoma: driver mutations and targeted therapy

// Xiao-Xiao Ding 1, * , Qing-Ge Zhu 1, * , Shi-Ming Zhang 1, * , Lei Guan 1 , Ting Li 1 , Lei Zhang 1 , Shi-Yang Wang 2 , Wan-Li Ren 2 , Xue-Mei Chen 1 , Jing Zhao 1 , Song Lin 1 , Zhi-Zhen Liu 1 , Yan-Xia Bai 2 , Bing He 1 and Hu-Qin Zhang 1 1 The Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, P. R. China 2 Department of Otorhinolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital, Jiaotong University, Shaanxi 710061, P. R. China * These authors have contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Hu-Qin Zhang, email: huqzhang@mail.xjtu.edu.cn Bing He, email: hebinghb@mail.xjtu.edu.cn Yan-Xia Bai, email: yanxiab@126.com Keywords: hepatocellular carcinoma, driver mutations, driver identification, targeted therapy, precision medicine Received: March 31, 2017 Accepted: May 10, 2017 Published: June 06, 2017 ABSTRACT Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the third most frequent cause of tumor-related mortality and there are an estimated approximately 850,000 new cases annually. Most HCC patients are diagnosed at middle or advanced stage, losing the opportunity of surgery. The development of HCC is promoted by accumulated diverse genetic mutations, which confer selective growth advantages to tumor cells and are called “driver mutations”. The discovery of driver mutations provides a novel precision medicine strategy for late stage HCC, called targeted therapy. In this review, we summarized currently discovered driver mutations and corresponding signaling pathways, made an overview of identification methods of driver mutations and genes, and classified targeted drugs for HCC. The knowledge of mutational landscape deepen our understanding of carcinogenesis and promise future precision medicine for HCC patients.