Gerges Noha, Jabado Nada
Department of Human Genetics, Montreal Children's Hospital Research Institute, 4060 Ste Catherine West, PT-239, Montreal, Qc, H3Z 2Z3, Canada.
Bioanalysis. 2010 May;2(5):881-99. doi: 10.4155/bio.10.49.
Despite considerable advances in the field of solid tumors, disseminated malignancy remains the cause of the vast majority of cancer-related deaths. In patients with no overt metastasis, early spread of tumor cells is usually undetected by current imaging technologies. In addition, the metastatic process is complex and depends on multiple interactions (crosstalk) of disseminating tumor cells with the individual homeostatic mechanisms, which the tumor cells can usurp. Despite these many variables, a flurry of surrogate biomarkers to detect micrometastasis has been developed in the last decade. These biomarkers open avenues for understanding cancer dormancy and metastasis, have the potential to provide novel therapeutic targets and may help predict outcome and therapeutic decisions at diagnosis and during follow-up of cancer patients. This review focuses on ongoing efforts to unravel metastasis biology, surrogate biomarkers currently investigated to monitor micrometastasis and tools used to identify, quantify and determine their capacity to efficiently establish metastasis.
尽管实体瘤领域取得了相当大的进展，但播散性恶性肿瘤仍然是绝大多数癌症相关死亡的原因。在没有明显转移的患者中，肿瘤细胞的早期扩散通常无法被当前的成像技术检测到。此外，转移过程很复杂，取决于播散性肿瘤细胞与个体稳态机制的多种相互作用（串扰），而肿瘤细胞可以利用这些机制。尽管存在诸多变量，但在过去十年中已经开发出一系列用于检测微转移的替代生物标志物。这些生物标志物为理解癌症休眠和转移开辟了道路，有可能提供新的治疗靶点，并可能有助于预测癌症患者诊断和随访期间的结果及治疗决策。本综述重点关注为阐明转移生物学所做的持续努力、目前用于监测微转移的替代生物标志物以及用于识别、量化和确定其有效建立转移能力的工具。
