Primary liver cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer death around the world. Histologically, it can be divided into two major groups, hepatocellular carcinoma (75% of all liver cancer) and intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (15% of all liver cancer) [1, 2]. Primary liver cancer usually happens in liver disease or cirrhosis patients [1], and the risk factors for developing HCC depend on the etiology [3] and the country of provenance [1]. There is an urgent need for an accurate diagnostic test given the high proportion of false positives and false negatives for alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), a common HCC biomarker [4]. Due to often being diagnosed in advanced stages, HCCrelated deaths per year have doubled since 1999 [3]. With the use of metabolomics technologies [5], the aberrant metabolism characteristics of cancer tissues can be discovered and exploited for the new biomarkers and new therapies to treat HCC [6, 7].
Keywords: Glucose metabolism; Glutamine metabolism; Lipid metabolism; Metabolic phenotypes; Oncogenic heterogeneity; Primary liver cancer; Redox metabolism; Sorafenib.