FIGURE 1.

Major molecular markers of gastrointestinal cancers. The key molecular markers for esophageal cancer include HER2 amplification or overexpression, PD-L1, EGFR, and VEGFR (Liu et al., 2020; Zhou and Hofstetter, 2020; Wang et al., 2025). For pancreatic cancer, the main molecular markers are NTRK fusion, BRCA1/2 mutations, KRAS mutations, BRAF mutations, and MSI (Collisson et al., 2019; Buscail et al., 2020; Wang S. et al., 2021; Schlick et al., 2021). Molecular markers for cholangiocarcinoma mainly include MSI, HER-2 amplification or overexpression KRAS mutations,IDH1/2 mutations, FGFR2 fusion and NTRK fusion (Rodrigues et al., 2021; Pavicevic et al., 2022; Kam et al., 2021). The major molecular markers for colorectal cancer include MMR/MSI, RAS/BRAF mutations, NTRK fusion, POLE/POLD1 mutations, PI3K mutations, and HER2 amplification or overexpression (Martelli et al., 2022; Taieb et al., 2019; Sepulveda et al., 2017). The main molecular markers for gastric cancer include MSI, PD-L1,HER-2 amplification or overexpression, Claudin18.2, TMB, and EBV (Guan et al., 2023; Joshi and Badgwell, 2021; Elimova et al., 2015). So far the molecular alterations in hepatocellular carcinoma have not led to effective treatments (Nault and Villanueva, 2021). In the figure we show several promising molecular markers such as ctDNA, ncRNA, TERT promoter mutation and MSI (Nault and Villanueva, 2021; Llovet et al., 2018; Chan et al., 2024a).