Glypican-3: A Promising Biomarker for Hepatocellular Carcinoma Diagnosis

Abstract

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most aggressive malignancies worldwide and one of the main causes of cancer-related mortality globally. So, estimation of serum level of certain up regulated proteins as glypican-3 (GPC-3) in HCC could be a promising biomarker for screening and early HCC detection. Recently glypican-3 (GPC-3) was suggested as novel biomarkers for the detection HCC. Clinical studies have indicated that the simultaneous determination of GPC3 and AFP could significantly increase the sensitivity in HCC detection, without reduction in specificity. The aim of our study to determine the role of Glypican 3 levels in the diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma in Egyptian patients and its prognostic role after successful treatment. Our study was conducted on 30 patients with liver cirrhosis and HCC on top and 30 patients with liver cirrhosis with no evidence of HCC who were admitted at Internal Medicine department - Ain Shams University Hospitals, during the period From February 2019 to December 2020. In this study we examined cirrhotic patients with or without HCC on top but alcoholics, diabetics and patients with autoimmune diseases and other malignancies were excluded