Department of Medicine, University of Udine, Udine, Italy.
Immunopathology and Cancer Biomarkers, Centro di Riferimento Oncologico di Aviano (CRO) IRCCS, Italy.
Curr Med Chem. 2018;25(35):4616-4637. doi: 10.2174/0929867325666180605122633.
In the present review, we describe three hot topics in cancer research such as circulating tumor cells, exosomes, and 3D environment models. The first section is dedicated to microfluidic platforms for detecting circulating tumor cells, including both affinity-based methods that take advantage of antibodies and aptamers, and "label-free" approaches, exploiting cancer cells physical features and, more recently, abnormal cancer metabolism. In the second section, we briefly describe the biology of exosomes and their role in cancer, as well as conventional techniques for their isolation and innovative microfluidic platforms. In the third section, the importance of tumor microenvironment is highlighted, along with techniques for modeling it in vitro. Finally, we discuss limitations of two-dimensional monolayer methods and describe advantages and disadvantages of different three-dimensional tumor systems for cell-cell interaction analysis and their potential applications in cancer management.
在本次综述中，我们描述了癌症研究中的三个热门主题，如循环肿瘤细胞、外泌体和 3D 环境模型。第一部分专门介绍了用于检测循环肿瘤细胞的微流控平台，包括利用抗体和适体的基于亲和力的方法，以及“无标记”方法，利用癌细胞的物理特征，以及最近的异常癌症代谢。在第二部分中，我们简要描述了外泌体的生物学及其在癌症中的作用，以及用于分离它们的常规技术和创新的微流控平台。在第三部分中，强调了肿瘤微环境的重要性，以及体外模拟它的技术。最后，我们讨论了二维单层方法的局限性，并描述了不同的三维肿瘤系统在细胞-细胞相互作用分析中的优缺点及其在癌症管理中的潜在应用。
