Detection technologies of circulating tumor cells / 国际肿瘤学杂志

ABSTRACT

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) detections have unique advantages in the real-time personalized medicine of patients with tumors.The rarity and heterogeneity of CTCs in peripheral blood pose great technical challenge for CTCs researches.Most of technologies for detecting CTCs have been developed to enrich CTCs by virtue of physical properties or specific biological features of the cells at first,then genotype or phenotype analysis are performed to count or characterize CTCs.Advances in molecular analysis of single cells enable CTCs detections to provide more accurate and comprehensive information.Biological processes during CTCs invasion and metastasis such as epithelial-mesenchymal transition and clustering should to be considered seriously to promote the clinical applications of CTCs detection.