scholarly journals Seeding metastases: The role and clinical utility of circulating tumour cells

Tumor Biology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 285-306
Author(s):  
Deep A. Patel ◽  
Jonathan Blay

Peripheral human blood is a readily-accessible source of patient material in which circulating tumour cells (CTCs) can be found. Their isolation and characterization holds the potential to provide prognostic value for various solid cancers. Enumeration of CTCs from blood is becoming a common practice in informing prognosis and may guide therapy decisions. It is further recognized that enumeration alone does not capture perspective on the heterogeneity of tumours and varying functional abilities of the CTCs to interact with the secondary microenvironment. Characterizing the isolated CTCs further, in particular assessing their functional abilities, can track molecular changes in the disease progress. As a step towards identifying a suite of functional features of CTCs that could aid in clinical decisions, developing a CTC isolation technique based on extracellular matrix (ECM) interactions may provide a more solid foundation for isolating the cells of interest. Techniques based on size, charge, density, and single biomarkers are not sufficient as they underutilize other characteristics of cancer cells. The ability of cancer cells to interact with ECM proteins presents an opportunity to utilize their full character in capturing, and also allows assessment of the features that reveal how cells might behave at secondary sites during metastasis. This article will review some common techniques and recent advances in CTC capture technologies. It will further explore the heterogeneity of the CTC population, challenges they experience in their metastatic journey, and the advantages of utilizing an ECM-based platform for CTC capture. Lastly, we will discuss how tailored ECM approaches may present an optimal platform to capture an influential heterogeneous population of CTCs.

Lung Cancer ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. O’Flaherty ◽  
Steven Gray ◽  
Derek Richard ◽  
Dean Fennell ◽  
John J. O’Leary ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (168) ◽  
pp. 20200065 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Akpe ◽  
Tak H. Kim ◽  
Christopher L. Brown ◽  
Ian E. Cock

Circulating tumour cells (CTCs) have recently been identified as valuable biomarkers for diagnostic and prognostic evaluations, as well for monitoring therapeutic responses to treatments. CTCs are rare cells which may be present as one CTC surrounded by approximately 1 million white blood cells and 1 billion red blood cells per millilitre of peripheral blood. Despite the various challenges in CTC detection, considerable progress in detection methods have been documented in recent times, particularly for methodologies incorporating nanomaterial-based platforms and/or integrated microfluidics. Herein, we summarize the importance of CTCs as biological markers for tumour detection, highlight their mechanism of cellular invasion and discuss the various challenges associated with CTC research, including vulnerability, heterogeneity, phenotypicity and size differences. In addition, we describe nanomaterial agents used for electrochemistry and surface plasmon resonance applications, which have recently been used to selectively capture cancer cells and amplify signals for CTC detection. The intrinsic properties of nanomaterials have also recently been exploited to achieve photothermal destruction of cancer cells. This review describes recent advancements and future perspectives in the CTC field.


2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 409-417 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Foy ◽  
Fabiola Fernandez-Gutierrez ◽  
Corinne Faivre-Finn ◽  
Caroline Dive ◽  
Fiona Blackhall

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