Department of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California.
USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California.
Cancer Rep (Hoboken). 2022 Apr;5(4):e1239. doi: 10.1002/cnr2.1239. Epub 2020 Feb 12.
How tumor cells disseminate to brain and establish brain metastasis remains partly an unsolved problem. This devastating complication of many cancers is initiated by a rare subset of the circulating tumor cells (CTCs) shed into the blood stream. Thus, the profiling of the molecular properties in these brain metastasis-initiating CTCs is essential to uncover the mechanisms underlying brain metastasis.
Important efforts to improve the enrichment and detection of CTCs enabled the detailed molecular and functional analysis of CTCs that drive brain metastasis. In this review, we highlight key findings on existing preclinical studies that provide insights toward a comprehensive picture of brain metastasis-precursors in CTCs and the potential clinical implications.
A deeper understanding of the brain metastasis precursors should help to stratify high-risk patients and improve preventive therapeutic strategies. Although all these preclinical evidences have yet to be translated into patients, they provide considerable hope to benefit patients with brain metastases in the future.
肿瘤细胞如何扩散到脑部并形成脑转移仍然是一个尚未解决的问题。许多癌症的这种破坏性并发症是由进入血流的循环肿瘤细胞（CTC）的罕见亚群引发的。因此，对这些具有脑转移起始能力的 CTC 中分子特性的分析对于揭示脑转移的机制至关重要。
为了提高 CTC 的富集和检测，进行了重要的努力，从而能够对驱动脑转移的 CTC 进行详细的分子和功能分析。在这篇综述中，我们重点介绍了现有临床前研究的关键发现，这些发现为 CTC 中脑转移前体的全面描述以及潜在的临床意义提供了新的视角。
对脑转移前体的深入了解将有助于对高危患者进行分层，并改善预防性治疗策略。尽管所有这些临床前证据尚未应用于患者，但它们为未来受益于脑转移患者提供了很大的希望。
