During the project, work has been undertaken on different aspects of HCC diagnosis, including imaging techniques, metabolomics, plasma extraction and health-seeking behaviour.
In work package 1, staff on secondment and local partners at INEN, Peru, and MoH, Laos, have designed and implemented surveys to learn more about the socio-economic status, therapeutic itineraries, disease perceptions and use of complementary medicines of patients who have been diagnosed with hepatitis or liver cancer. The profile of hepatitis-infected patients at risk of developing liver cancer has been defined in both countries.
In work package 2, European researchers seconded to INEN have provided training on diagnostic methods through a number of workshops and presentations. Together with INEN staff, ULB secondees have implemented a protocol for the acquisition of imaging data that includes the transfer of information between the partners through web servers. The acquisition pipeline is now in place for continuous data acquisition and transfer to ULB server.
In parallel, researchers from INEN and IRD have built a retrospective database of Peruvian HCC patients in order to evaluate the therapeutic outcomes in patients from Peru.
Researchers for the first time have set a contextualized nomogram for the therapeutic decision making. Staff from MOH in Laos have also travelled to ULB in Belgium for training on imaging techniques.
The EchOpen probe has experienced many delays due to the complexity of the design, the impact of the entry into force of the new European regulation on medical devices, the delays of which have been particularly long, and the serious difficulties in supplying electronic components. But the teams are ready to keep working together in the next future when the probe will be ready.
In work package 3, staff from MOH and INEN were seconded to UT3 for the purpose of undertaking metabolomic analysis and training, and staff from Faculty of Pharmacy (MOH) were seconded to KUT for the purpose of developing best extraction methods and training, during the first year of the project. To test extraction methods, plasma from Laos was consecutively extracted by supercritical carbon dioxide, pressurised acetone and pressurized ethanol for step-by-step recovery of the increasing polarity soluble substances from the plasma, and the extracts were collected for chromatographic/spectroscopic analysis. Afterwards they were analysed by UPLC-qTOF. In parallel, a comparative analysis was undertaken in Toulouse. The method allowed to detect some interesting trends regarding control versus HBV samples, mainly related to amino acids compounds, and showed that some lipids were also specifically regulated upon HBV infection. KTU optimized extraction procedures. Although Covid and the political tensions in Europe have greatly affected this workpackage, secondments to UT3 and KTU have highlighted specific patient profiles at risk.
