Aoki Masahiko, Shoji Hirokazu, Kashiro Ayumi, Takeuchi Keiko, Shimizu Yoshihiro, Honda Kazufumi
Department of Biomarkers for Early Detection of Cancer, National Cancer Center Research Institute, Tokyo 104-0045, Japan.
Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology Division, National Cancer Center Hospital, Tokyo 104-0045, Japan.
Cancers (Basel). 2020 May 1;12(5):1135. doi: 10.3390/cancers12051135.
The comprehensive analysis of biological and clinical aspects of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) has attracted interest as a means of enabling non-invasive, real-time monitoring of cancer patients and enhancing our fundamental understanding of tumor metastasis. However, CTC populations are extremely small when compared to other cell populations in the blood, limiting our comprehension of CTC biology and their clinical utility. Recently developed proteomic and genomic techniques that require only a small amount of sample have attracted much interest and expanded the potential utility of CTCs. Cancer heterogeneity, including specific mutations, greatly impacts disease diagnosis and the choice of available therapeutic strategies. The CTC population consists primarily of cancer stem cells, and CTC subpopulations are thought to undergo epithelial-mesenchymal transition during dissemination. To better characterize tumor cell populations, we demonstrated that changes in genomic profiles identified via next-generation sequencing of liquid biopsy samples could be expanded upon to increase sensitivity without decreasing specificity by using a combination of assays with CTCs and circulating tumor DNA. To enhance our understanding of CTC biology, we developed a metabolome analysis method applicable to single CTCs. Here, we review-omics studies related to CTC analysis and discuss various clinical and biological issues related to CTCs.
循环肿瘤细胞（CTC）的生物学和临床方面的综合分析，作为一种对癌症患者进行无创、实时监测并加深我们对肿瘤转移基本理解的手段，已引起了人们的关注。然而，与血液中的其他细胞群体相比，CTC群体极其微小，这限制了我们对CTC生物学及其临床应用的理解。最近开发的仅需少量样本的蛋白质组学和基因组学技术引起了广泛关注，并扩展了CTC的潜在应用。癌症异质性，包括特定突变，极大地影响疾病诊断和可用治疗策略的选择。CTC群体主要由癌症干细胞组成，并且认为CTC亚群在播散过程中会经历上皮-间质转化。为了更好地表征肿瘤细胞群体，我们证明，通过对液体活检样本进行下一代测序鉴定出的基因组谱变化，可以通过结合使用CTC和循环肿瘤DNA的检测方法来加以扩展，从而在不降低特异性的情况下提高灵敏度。为了加深我们对CTC生物学的理解，我们开发了一种适用于单个CTC的代谢组分析方法。在此，我们综述与CTC分析相关的组学研究，并讨论与CTC相关的各种临床和生物学问题。
