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Chia et al. Hepatoma Res 2019;5:9 I http://dx.doi.org/10.20517/2394-5079.2018.112 Page 9 of 14

model of human breast cancer [133] . There studies strongly support OPN as a potential target for the antibody-
based cancer therapy, although the anti-cancer efficacy of OPN mAbs in HCC has remained to be studied.

CONCLUSION
HCC is an extremely difficult to treat cancer, which generally involves multiple pathologic complications
includinghepatitis, metabolic (NASH and diabetic), fibrotic and cirrhotic diseased conditions in addition to
the notorioustumor burden. As a result, both the current diagnosis and treatments of HCC remain largely
ineffective. Therefore, bringing new biomarkers and innovative treatments to the patients are in critical
demand. With the recent advent of cancer immunotherapy, it is more than ever necessary to find tumour-
specific biomarkers as therapeutic targets. One of the major challenges in immunotherapy on solid tumours
is the extreme scarcity of highly specific targets [134] . Failure to find such a target has led to not only ineffective
treatment but also high toxicities and even deaths in clinical trials [135-138] . Despite being extremely rare
and highly challenging, fortunately, recent advances in next-generation sequencing and high-throughput
technologies would, undoubtedly, accelerate discovery of such biomarkers and make progress for the
diagnosis and treatment of HCC.

DECLARATIONS
Authors’ contributions
Wrote the manuscript: Chia TS, Wong KF, Luk JM
Reviewed the manuscript: Luk JM

Availability of data and materials
Not applicable.

Financial support and sponsorship
Chia TS and Wong KF are partly supported by the Postdoctoral Hub Programme of the Innovation and
Technology Commission of the Government of HKSAR.

Conflicts of interest
All authors declared that there are no conflicts of interest.

Ethical approval and consent to participate
Not applicable.

Consent for publication
Not applicable.

Copyright
© The Author(s) 2019.

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