Au Sam H, Edd Jon, Haber Daniel A, Maheswaran Shyamala, Stott Shannon L, Toner Mehmet
Center for Engineering in Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02114.
Department of Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02114.
Curr Opin Biomed Eng. 2017 Sep;3:13-19. doi: 10.1016/j.cobme.2017.08.001. Epub 2017 Aug 10.
The vast majority of cancer associated deaths result from metastasis, yet the behaviors of its most potent cellular driver, circulating tumor cell clusters, are only beginning to be revealed. This review highlights recent advances to our understanding of tumor cell clusters with emphasis on enabling technologies. The importance of intercellular adhesions among cells in clusters have begun to be unraveled with the aid of promising microfluidic strategies for isolating clusters from patient blood. Due to their metastatic potency, the utility of circulating tumor cell clusters for cancer diagnosis, drug screening, precision oncology and as targets of antimetastatic therapeutics are being explored. The continued development of tools for exploring circulating tumor cell clusters will enhance our fundamental understanding of the metastatic process and may be instrumental in devising new strategies to suppress and eliminate metastasis.
绝大多数与癌症相关的死亡是由转移引起的，然而，其最有效的细胞驱动因素——循环肿瘤细胞簇的行为才刚刚开始被揭示。这篇综述重点介绍了在理解肿瘤细胞簇方面的最新进展，尤其强调了使能技术。借助从患者血液中分离簇的有前景的微流控策略，细胞间粘附在簇中的重要性已开始被揭示。由于其转移潜能，循环肿瘤细胞簇在癌症诊断、药物筛选、精准肿瘤学以及作为抗转移治疗靶点方面的效用正在被探索。探索循环肿瘤细胞簇的工具的持续发展将增强我们对转移过程的基本理解，并可能有助于设计抑制和消除转移的新策略。
