Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA 02129, United States.
Curr Opin Genet Dev. 2010 Feb;20(1):96-9. doi: 10.1016/j.gde.2009.12.002. Epub 2010 Jan 12.
The presence of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) accompanies tumor invasion into the bloodstream. Detection, monitoring, and molecular analysis of these rare cancer cells shed into blood will provide a powerful and noninvasive approach for the detection of early disease, assessing prognosis and therapeutic response in established cancers, and targeting metastatic precursor cells. We review current and emerging technologies for CTC isolation, with a focus on capture efficiency, purity, and viability of CTCs, and their potential clinical applications.
循环肿瘤细胞（CTCs）的存在伴随着肿瘤侵入血液。这些罕见的癌细胞进入血液后被检测、监测和分子分析，将为早期疾病的检测、评估已确诊癌症的预后和治疗反应以及靶向转移前体细胞提供一种强大且非侵入性的方法。我们综述了目前和新兴的 CTC 分离技术，重点关注 CTC 的捕获效率、纯度和活力，及其潜在的临床应用。
