Urinary protein signature combined with clinical information for preoperative prediction of microvascular invasion in HCC patients

Microvascular invasion (MVI) is a main factor affecting the prognosis of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). A study at the Cancer Hospital of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (Beijing) aimed to identify accurate diagnostic biomarkers from urinary protein signatures for preoperative prediction of MVI. Based on the urinary levels of four proteins (CETP, HGFL, L1CAM, and LAIR2), combined with tumor diameter, serum AFP, and GGT concentrations, a nomogram was developed to preoperatively predict MVI. The nomogram achieved good concordance indexes of 0.809 and 0.783 in predicting MVI in the training and testing cohorts.