Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, University of Athens, Athens, Greece.
Clin Chem Lab Med. 2011 Oct;49(10):1579-90. doi: 10.1515/CCLM.2011.628. Epub 2011 Jul 29.
Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) provide unique information for the management of breast cancer patients, since their detection and monitoring is useful for prognosis, prediction of response to therapy, or monitoring clinical course in patients with localized or metastatic disease. Currently, the most practical application of CTCs is monitoring of patients with metastatic disease. Elevated CTC levels prior to initiation of a new systemic therapy are associated with a worse prognosis while persistently elevated CTC levels strongly suggest that the therapeutic regimen with which the patient is being treated is not working. New areas of research are directed toward developing novel sensitive assays for CTC molecular characterization. Molecular characterization of CTCs is very important for the future use of CTCs as targets of novel therapies. This review has focused on the presentation of recent data showing that CTCs are emerging as novel tumor biomarkers for prognostic and predictive purposes in breast cancer.
循环肿瘤细胞（CTCs）为乳腺癌患者的管理提供了独特的信息，因为它们的检测和监测对于预后、治疗反应的预测或局部或转移性疾病患者的临床过程监测都很有用。目前，CTCs 最实际的应用是监测转移性疾病患者。在开始新的全身治疗之前，CTC 水平升高与预后不良相关，而持续升高的 CTC 水平强烈表明患者正在接受的治疗方案无效。新的研究领域旨在开发用于 CTC 分子特征分析的新型敏感检测方法。CTC 的分子特征对于将来将 CTC 用作新型治疗的靶点非常重要。这篇综述重点介绍了最近的数据，这些数据表明 CTC 正在成为乳腺癌预后和预测目的的新型肿瘤生物标志物。
