Liquid biopsy as a diagnostic and prognostic tool — A systematic review

Liquid biopsy refers to a non-invasive technique of obtaining body fluid in order to analyse circulating biomarkers indicative of carcinomatous diseases. The characterization of these liquid biomarkers help in diagnosis and to choose the therapeutic strategy for each different case. Oral and oropharyngeal cancers are the largest group of those cancers which fall into the head and neck cancer category. Common names for it include mouth cancer, tongue cancer, tonsil cancer, and throat cancer. This systematic review summarizes 11years (2009 -2020) studies done on liquid biopsy in oral and head and neck carcinoma from electronic search engines such as PUBMED, MEDLINE, GOOGLE J-GATE to get the overview of clinical significance of circulating biomarkers (CTCs, ctDNA, Exosomes, miRNA, lncRNAs, Cytokeratin 20mRNA) as diagnostic and prognostic tool. The impact of liquid biopsy in clinical settings is still limited thus allowing further studies in a bigger perspective to discover the best scenario for its application.