Department of Surgery, Oncology and Gastroenterology, Oncology Section, University of Padova, 35124 Padova, Italy.
Veneto Institute of Oncology IOV-IRCCS, 35128 Padua, Italy.
Cells. 2019 Aug 27;8(9):989. doi: 10.3390/cells8090989.
Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are cellular elements that can be scattered into the bloodstream from primary cancer, metastasis, and even from a disseminated tumor cell (DTC) reservoir. CTCs are "seeds", able to give rise to new metastatic lesions. Since metastases are the cause of about 90% of cancer-related deaths, the significance of CTCs is unquestionable. However, two major issues have stalled their full clinical exploitation: rarity and heterogeneity. Therefore, their full clinical potential has only been predicted. Finding new ways of studying and using such tremendously rare and important events can open new areas of research in the field of cancer research, and could drastically improve tumor companion diagnostics, personalized treatment strategies, overall patients management, and reduce healthcare costs.
循环肿瘤细胞（CTCs）是可以从原发性肿瘤、转移灶甚至从播散性肿瘤细胞（DTC）库中分散到血液中的细胞成分。CTCs 是“种子”，能够产生新的转移性病变。由于转移是导致约 90%癌症相关死亡的原因，因此 CTCs 的意义是毋庸置疑的。然而，有两个主要问题阻碍了它们的全面临床应用：稀有性和异质性。因此，它们的全部临床潜力只是被预测到了。寻找研究和利用这些极其罕见和重要事件的新方法，可以为癌症研究领域开辟新的研究领域，并可以极大地改善肿瘤伴随诊断、个体化治疗策略、整体患者管理，降低医疗保健成本。
