Foy Victoria, Fernandez-Gutierrez Fabiola, Faivre-Finn Corinne, Dive Caroline, Blackhall Fiona
Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology Group, CRUK Manchester Institute, CRUK Manchester Institute, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK.
Institute of Cancer Sciences, CRUK Manchester Institute, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK.
Transl Lung Cancer Res. 2017 Aug;6(4):409-417. doi: 10.21037/tlcr.2017.07.05.
Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) accounts for 15% of lung cancer diagnosed worldwide. It is aggressive and characterised by early metastatic spread with rapid development of chemo resistance such that less than 5% of patients diagnosed survive 5 years. Surgery is rarely performed and failure to identify new effective treatments has been attributed in a large part to lack of good quality tumour biopsies available for translational research. Liquid biopsies provide a minimally invasive alternative to traditional tumour biopsy. Circulating tumour cells (CTCs) are abundant in SCLC and can be enriched and isolated from a venous blood sample. In recent years progress has been made into the molecular characterisation of CTCs and their use to form tumour xenografts in mice for preclinical studies. This review will discuss the current status of the clinical utility of CTCs in patients with SCLC, highlighting their potential application to treatment decision making, drug development in clinical trials and preclinical testing.
小细胞肺癌（SCLC）占全球确诊肺癌的15%。它具有侵袭性，其特征是早期发生转移扩散，且化疗耐药性迅速发展，以至于确诊的患者中存活5年的不到5%。很少进行手术，未能识别出新的有效治疗方法在很大程度上归因于缺乏可用于转化研究的高质量肿瘤活检样本。液体活检为传统肿瘤活检提供了一种微创替代方法。循环肿瘤细胞（CTC）在小细胞肺癌中大量存在，可从静脉血样本中富集和分离出来。近年来，在循环肿瘤细胞的分子特征分析及其在小鼠中形成肿瘤异种移植用于临床前研究方面取得了进展。本综述将讨论循环肿瘤细胞在小细胞肺癌患者中的临床应用现状，强调其在治疗决策、临床试验药物开发和临床前测试中的潜在应用。
