Circulating Tumor Cells: Finding Rare Events for a Huge Knowledge of Cancer Dissemination

摘要

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) as real-time liquid biopsy [ ] can be used to obtain new insights into the biology of the metastatic cascade, and as a companion diagnostic to improve the stratification of therapies and to obtain new insights into therapy-induced selection of cancer cells. Combining different circulating biomarkers, such as CTCs, circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) and extracellular vesicles (EVs) analysis, will provide different and complementary information. Technical and clinical assay validation in big cohorts of cancer patients is crucial and can be achieved in international consortia such as the European Liquid Biopsy Society (ELBS) [ ].