Globally, hepatocellular carcinoma is a common type of cancer with a high mortality and recurrence rate (with incidence and mortality rates of approximately 1:1). Even patients with early-stage disease who are offered curative treatment have a recurrence risk of more than 50%, as well as a significant risk of major complications following surgery. Consequently, there is a need for biomarkers to identify patients with a favourable prognosis who may benefit from treatment.

Microvascular invasion in tumours is one of the most important prognostic biomarkers, strongly correlating with recurrence and survival. However, current techniques cannot reliably identify it prior to surgery. This HALRIC pilot project will use 3D X-ray microtomography (µCT) for the first time to evaluate microvascular tumour invasion density prior to surgery.

Once the project’s feasibility has been established under the project, the team will obtain additional funding to expand it by including more patients. For this, we will correlate µCT results with the serum metabolome and the prognosis (survival and recurrence) of patients, in order to identify the clinical phenotypes of microvascular invasion. We will also assess the value of the serum metabolome in identifying patients with microvascular invasion.