Nanobioengineering Group, Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST), 12 Baldiri Reixac 15-21, 08028 Barcelona, Spain.
Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red en Bioingeniería, Biomateriales y Nanomedicina (CIBER-BBN), Monforte de Lemos 3-5, Pabellón 11, 28029 Madrid, Spain.
Int J Mol Sci. 2018 Sep 21;19(10):2877. doi: 10.3390/ijms19102877.
Cancer is one of the greatest threats facing our society, being the second leading cause of death globally. Currents strategies for cancer diagnosis consist of the extraction of a solid tissue from the affected area. This sample enables the study of specific biomarkers and the genetic nature of the tumor. However, the tissue extraction is risky and painful for the patient and in some cases is unavailable in inaccessible tumors. Moreover, a solid biopsy is expensive and time consuming and cannot be applied repeatedly. New alternatives that overcome these drawbacks are rising up nowadays, such as liquid biopsy. A liquid biopsy is the analysis of biomarkers in a non-solid biological tissue, mainly blood, which has remarkable advantages over the traditional method; it has no risk, it is non-invasive and painless, it does not require surgery and reduces cost and diagnosis time. The most studied cancer non-invasive biomarkers are circulating tumor cells (CTCs), circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), and exosomes. These circulating biomarkers play a key role in the understanding of metastasis and tumorigenesis, which could provide a better insight into the evolution of the tumor dynamics during treatment and disease progression. Improvements in isolation technologies, based on a higher grade of purification of CTCs, exosomes, and ctDNA, will provide a better characterization of biomarkers and give rise to a wide range of clinical applications, such as early detection of diseases, and the prediction of treatment responses due to the discovery of personalized tumor-related biomarkers.
癌症是我们社会面临的最大威胁之一，是全球第二大死亡原因。目前癌症诊断策略包括从受影响区域提取固体组织。该样本可用于研究特定的生物标志物和肿瘤的遗传性质。然而，组织提取对患者来说是有风险和痛苦的，在某些情况下，在难以到达的肿瘤中无法进行。此外，实体活组织检查既昂贵又费时，并且不能重复应用。如今，新的替代方法正在出现，例如液体活检。液体活检是对非固体生物组织（主要是血液）中的生物标志物进行分析，与传统方法相比具有显著优势；它没有风险，非侵入性和无痛，不需要手术，并且降低了成本和诊断时间。最受研究的癌症非侵入性生物标志物是循环肿瘤细胞（CTC）、循环肿瘤 DNA（ctDNA）和外泌体。这些循环生物标志物在转移和肿瘤发生的理解中起着关键作用，这可以更好地了解治疗过程中肿瘤动态的演变和疾病进展。基于 CTCs、外泌体和 ctDNA 的更高纯度的分离技术的改进，将提供更好的生物标志物特征描述，并引发广泛的临床应用，例如疾病的早期检测，以及由于发现与肿瘤相关的个体化生物标志物而预测治疗反应。
