Circulating Tumor Cell Technologies

Overview

Journal Mol Oncol

Specialties Molecular Biology
Oncology

Date 2016 Feb 22

PMID 26897752

Citations 244

Authors

Meghaan M Ferreira

Vishnu C Ramani

Stefanie S Jeffrey

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Circulating tumor cells, a component of the "liquid biopsy", hold great potential to transform the current landscape of cancer therapy. A key challenge to unlocking the clinical utility of CTCs lies in the ability to detect and isolate these rare cells using methods amenable to downstream characterization and other applications. In this review, we will provide an overview of current technologies used to detect and capture CTCs with brief insights into the workings of individual technologies. We focus on the strategies employed by different platforms and discuss the advantages of each. As our understanding of CTC biology matures, CTC technologies will need to evolve, and we discuss some of the present challenges facing the field in light of recent data encompassing epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, tumor-initiating cells, and CTC clusters.

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