RNA and molecular pathology (RAMP) research group. Department of Medical Biology. The Artic University of Norway (Tromso), Norway.
INSERM, European Associated Laboratory "Sarcoma Research Unit", Department of Oncology and Metabolism, Medical School, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom.
Theranostics. 2019 Jun 19;9(16):4580-4594. doi: 10.7150/thno.34337. eCollection 2019.
Tumor heterogeneity is the major cause of failure in cancer prognosis and prediction. Accurately detecting heterogeneity for the development of biomarkers and the detection of the clones resistant to therapy is one of the main goals of contemporary medicine. Metastases belong to the natural history of cancer. The present review gives an overview on the origin of tumor heterogeneity. Recent progress has made it possible to isolate and characterize circulating tumor cells (CTCs), which are the drivers of the disease between the primary sites and metastatic foci. The most recent methods for characterizing CTCs are summarized and we discuss the power of CTC profiling for analyzing tumor heterogeneity in early and advanced diseases.
肿瘤异质性是癌症预后和预测失败的主要原因。准确检测异质性，开发生物标志物并检测对治疗有耐药性的克隆，是当代医学的主要目标之一。转移是癌症的自然病程。本综述概述了肿瘤异质性的起源。最近的进展使得分离和鉴定循环肿瘤细胞（CTCs）成为可能，CTCs 是原发灶和转移灶之间疾病的驱动因素。本文总结了最近用于鉴定 CTCs 的方法，并讨论了 CTC 分析在早期和晚期疾病中分析肿瘤异质性的潜力。
