Circulating and disseminated tumor cells: diagnostic tools and therapeutic targets in motion

Enumeration of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in peripheral blood with the gold standard CellSearchTM has proven prognostic value for tumor recurrence and progression of metastatic disease. Therefore, the further molecular characterization of isolated CTCs might have clinical relevance as liquid biopsy for therapeutic decision-making and to monitor disease progression. The direct analysis of systemic cancer appears particularly important in view of the known disparity in expression of therapeutic targets as well as epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT)-based heterogeneity between primary and systemic tumor cells, which all substantially complicate monitoring and therapeutic targeting at present. Since CTCs are the potential precursor cells of metastasis, their in-depth molecular profiling should also provide a useful resource for target discovery. The present review will discuss the use of systemically spread cancer cells as liquid biopsy and focus on potential target antigens.

• Publication year

  2016

• Venue

  OncoTarget

• Publication date

  2016-09-24

• Fields of study

  Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.18632/oncotarget.12242PMID 27683128PMCID 5352105
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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