# NOVEL STRATEGIES TO IMPROVE LIVER CANCER SURVEILLANCE UPTAKE AND EARLY DETECTION

> **NIH NIH U01** · UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AT ANN ARBOR · 2022 · $665,380

## Abstract

ABSTRACT
This proposal is submitted in response to RFA-CA-17-025. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most
common primary liver cancer and one of the few cancers with increasing incidence in the United States.
Survival of patients with HCC is poor because most patients are diagnosed at late stages when treatment
options are limited. HCC surveillance can detect cancers early and improve survival but it is inconsistently
implemented. Not all liver nodules detected on surveillance imaging are malignant, these indeterminate
nodules require follow up imaging to determine if they are HCC. This proposal assembles a team of specialists
with complementary expertise in liver diseases, liver cancer, radiology, engineering, statistics, and information
technology. The goals are to: (1) Improve HCC surveillance uptake in patients with cirrhosis by leveraging
electronic medical records to remind healthcare providers and patients when they are due for screening tests;
(2) Leverage analytic morphomics and machine learning to increase the detectability of HCC at an early stage;
and (3) Increase detectability of HCC at an early stage using tagged HCC-specific peptides. We have worked
closely together for many years and have participated/led many NIH funded clinical research networks. We
have expertise and experience to carry out the proposed studies and will collaborate with other centers in the
Liver Center Network to validate the methods/models we develop. We will also enroll patients with cirrhosis
and collect data and specimens and provide access to existing well characterized data and specimen
repositories that include both prevalent and incident HCC for Trans-Network studies. We are confident we will
be able to contribute to this Liver Cancer Network and to early detection of HCC in multiple ways.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10457301
- **Project number:** 5U01CA230669-05
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AT ANN ARBOR
- **Principal Investigator:** ANNA S.F. LOK
- **Activity code:** U01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $665,380
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-09-13 → 2024-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10457301

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10457301, NOVEL STRATEGIES TO IMPROVE LIVER CANCER SURVEILLANCE UPTAKE AND EARLY DETECTION (5U01CA230669-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10457301. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*