Liver Cancer Awareness Month 2025

Liver Cancer Awareness Month

Diagnostic BioSystems raises awareness on one of the life-threatening and one of the fastest-growing cancer types among all races, ethnicities, and genders – “Liver Cancer”.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common (> 80%) primary liver malignancy worldwide. Sixth most common malignancy and fourth most common cause of cancer mortality worldwide. Asia (72.5%) has the highest incidence worldwide, followed by Europe (9.8%), Africa (7.7%), North America (5%), Latin America and the Caribbean (4.6%) and Oceania (0.4%). The median age of onset is older than sixth decade in North America and Europe, while the median age of onset in Asia and Africa is between the third and sixth decades. The most common etiologies leading to chronic liver disease, to cirrhosis, then to HCC are chronic viral hepatitides (hepatitis B virus and hepatitis C virus), heavy alcohol consumption, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease among others. For differentiating HCC from other liver tumors, such as cholangiocarcinoma or metastatic cancers, which have different treatment protocols, immunohistochemistry (IHC) is very important. The following lists some very useful antibodies for IHC to distinguish primary liver cancers from metastatic liver cancer.

Arginase1: Positive in HCC, cytoplasmic or nuclear staining, useful in confirming hepatocellular differentiation and poorly differentiated HCC; highly sensitive and specific.

HepPar1: Positive in HCC, cytoplasmic and granular Staining; overall highly sensitive but 50% of poorly differentiated lose expression.

Glypican 3: Positive in HCC, cytoplasmic staining; high sensitivity in poorly differentiated and scirrhous HCC but low sensitivity in well differentiated HCC. Nonneoplastic liver is negative.

AFP: Positive in HCC, cytoplasmic staining; highly specific but low sensitivity; frequently negative in well differentiated HCC.

CD10, Polyclonal CEA, and villin reveal a canalicular staining pattern; limited sensitivity in poorly differentiated hepatocellular carcinoma Pancytokeratins such as MNF116 or OSCAR) and CAM5.2 (CK8 / CK18): Positive in HCC, cytoplasmic staining .

Some other epithelial antibody markers such as AE1 / AE3, CK7 , CK13, CK19 , CK20, MOC31, BerEP4, CDX2, Monoclonal CEA are almost all negative in HCC. However, these markers mostly are positive in metastatic carcinomas from other organs, and they are very useful in distinction of primary HCC.