Gao Yang, Zhu Yayun, Yuan Zhou
Department of General Surgery, Shanghai Jiao Tong University Affiliated Sixth People's Hospital, Shanghai, People's Republic of China.
Int J Med Sci. 2016 Nov 4;13(12):902-913. doi: 10.7150/ijms.16734. eCollection 2016.
Pancreatic cancer has a rather dismal prognosis mainly due to high malignance of tumor biology. Up to now, the relevant researches on pancreatic cancer lag behind seriously partly due to the obstacles for tissue biopsy, which handicaps the understanding of molecular and genetic features of pancreatic cancer. In the last two decades, liquid biopsy, including circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), is promising to provide new insights into the biological and clinical characteristics of malignant tumors. Both CTCs and ctDNA provide an opportunity for studying tumor heterogeneity, drug resistance, and metastatic mechanism for pancreatic cancer. Furthermore, they can also play important roles in detecting early-stage tumors, providing prognostic information, monitoring tumor progression and guiding treatment regimens. In this review, we will introduce the latest findings on biological features and clinical applications of both CTCs and ctDNA in pancreatic cancer. In a word, CTCs and ctDNA are promising to promote precision medicine in pancreatic cancer.
胰腺癌的预后相当严峻，主要原因是肿瘤生物学的高度恶性。到目前为止，胰腺癌的相关研究严重滞后，部分原因是组织活检存在障碍，这妨碍了对胰腺癌分子和基因特征的了解。在过去二十年中，液体活检，包括循环肿瘤细胞（CTC）和循环肿瘤DNA（ctDNA），有望为恶性肿瘤的生物学和临床特征提供新的见解。CTC和ctDNA都为研究胰腺癌的肿瘤异质性、耐药性和转移机制提供了机会。此外，它们在检测早期肿瘤、提供预后信息、监测肿瘤进展和指导治疗方案方面也可以发挥重要作用。在这篇综述中，我们将介绍CTC和ctDNA在胰腺癌中的生物学特征和临床应用的最新发现。总之，CTC和ctDNA有望推动胰腺癌的精准医学发展。
