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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Bioinform.
Sec. Integrative Bioinformatics
Volume 4 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fbinf.2024.1332782

Detection of reproducible liver cancer specific ligand-receptor signaling in blood

Provisionally accepted
Aram Safrastyan Aram Safrastyan 1,2*Damian Wollny Damian Wollny 1,2,3
  • 1 Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany
  • 2 Leibniz Institute on Aging, Fritz Lipmann Institute (FLI), Jena, Thuringia, Germany
  • 3 Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Lower Saxony, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Cell-cell communication mediated by ligand-receptor interactions (LRI) is critical to coordinating diverse biological processes in homeostasis and disease. Lately, our understanding of these processes has greatly expanded through the inference of cellular communication, utilizing RNA extracted from bulk tissue or individual cells. Considering the challenge of obtaining tissue biopsies for these approaches, we considered the potential of studying cell-free RNA obtained from blood. To test the feasibility of this approach, we used the BulkSignalR algorithm across 295 cell-free RNA samples and compared the LRI profiles across multiple cancer types and healthy donors. Interestingly, we detected specific and reproducible LRIs particularly in the blood of liver cancer patients compared to healthy donors. We found an increase in the magnitude of hepatocyte interactions, notably hepatocyte autocrine interactions in liver cancer patients. Additionally, a robust panel of 30 liver cancer-specific LRIs presents a bridge linking liver cancer pathogenesis to discernible blood markers.In summary, our approach shows the plausibility of detecting liver LRIs in blood and builds upon the biological understanding of cell-free transcriptomes.

    Keywords: liquid biopsy, liver cancer, cell-cell interaction, single-cell RNA sequencing, cell-free RNA, bioinformatics

    Received: 03 Nov 2023; Accepted: 24 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Safrastyan and Wollny. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Aram Safrastyan, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.