循环肿瘤细胞的生物学特性及其临床意义

摘要

循环肿瘤细胞( CTCs)被认为是肿瘤侵袭的标志物,CTCs的检测也越来越被重视. 另外,连续检测患者外周血中的CTCs能够反映系统性治疗的有效性等临床相关信息. 然而,由于外周血中CTCs数目极少及其异质性,目前需要敏感性和特异性更高的检测方法. 该文综述了近年来关于CTCs的生物学特征和临床意义,同时也总结了富集和检测外周血CTCs的一些方法,探讨了 CTCs在肿瘤个体化治疗方面的应用及挑战.%Circulating tumor cells ( CTCs) is considered as a sign of tumor aggressiveness, and the detection of CTCs has gained increasing attention .Moreover,sequential analysis of CTCs can provide relevant clinical information on the effectiveness and progression of systemic therapies .However,CTCs detection needs highly sensitive and specific methods owing to its rarity and heterogeneity in peripheral blood .Here summari-zes recent studies on the biological and clinical significance of CTCs ,and introduces the recent technological approaches of enrichment and detection of peripheral blood CTCs , and discusses the application and chal-lenge in individualized tumor treatment .