Roche-Chus Joint Unit, Translational Medical Oncology Group (Oncomet), Health Research Institute of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
Translational Medical Oncology Group (Oncomet), Health Research Institute of Santiago de Compostela, University Clinical Hospital of Santiago de Compostela (CHUS/SERGAS), Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
Adv Exp Med Biol. 2020;1220:93-115. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-35805-1_7.
Metastasis is the major cause of mortality in patients with breast cancer; however, the mechanisms of tumor cell dissemination and metastasis formation are not well established yet. The study of circulating tumour cells (CTCs), the metastatic precursors of distant disease, may help in this search. CTCs can be found in the blood of cancer patients as single cells or as tumor cell aggregates, known as CTC clusters. CTC clusters have differential biological features such as an enhanced survival and metastatic potential, and they hold great promises for the evaluation of prognosis, diagnosis and therapy of the metastatic cancer. The analysis of CTC clusters offers new insights into the mechanism of metastasis and can guide towards the development of new diagnostic and therapeutic strategies to suppress cancer metastasis. This has become possible thanks to the development of improved technologies for detection of CTCs and CTC clusters. However, more efficient methods are needed in order to address important questions regarding the metastatic potential of CTC and future clinical applications. In this chapter, we explore the current knowledge on the role of CTC clusters in breast cancer metastasis, their origin, metastatic advantages and clinical importance.
转移是乳腺癌患者死亡的主要原因；然而，肿瘤细胞扩散和转移形成的机制尚未完全确定。对循环肿瘤细胞（CTC）的研究可能有助于这一探索，CTC 是远处疾病转移的前体，可以在癌症患者的血液中作为单个细胞或肿瘤细胞聚集物（称为 CTC 簇）找到。CTC 簇具有不同的生物学特征，如增强的生存和转移潜力，它们为评估转移性癌症的预后、诊断和治疗提供了巨大的希望。对 CTC 簇的分析为转移机制提供了新的见解，并为开发新的诊断和治疗策略以抑制癌症转移提供了指导。这要归功于用于检测 CTC 和 CTC 簇的改进技术的发展。然而，为了回答有关 CTC 转移潜力和未来临床应用的重要问题，还需要更有效的方法。在这一章中，我们探讨了 CTC 簇在乳腺癌转移中的作用、起源、转移优势和临床重要性的现有知识。
