The South China University of Technology School of Medicine, 510006, Guangzhou, China.
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center Houston , Texas, USA.
Mol Cancer. 2021 Feb 16;20(1):34. doi: 10.1186/s12943-021-01309-7.
Early detection and diagnosis are the key to successful clinical management of pancreatic cancer and improve the patient outcome. However, due to the absence of early symptoms and the aggressiveness of pancreatic cancer, its 5-year survival rate remains below 5 %. Compared to tissue samples, liquid biopsies are of particular interest in clinical settings with respect to minimal invasiveness, repeated sampling, complete representation of the entire or multi-site tumor bulks. The potential of liquid biopsies in pancreatic cancer has been demonstrated by many studies which prove that liquid biopsies are able to detect early emergency of pancreatic cancer cells, residual disease, and recurrence. More interestingly, they show potential to delineate the heterogeneity, spatial and temporal, of pancreatic cancer. However, the performance of liquid biopsies for the diagnosis varies largely across different studies depending of the technique employed and also the type and stage of the tumor. One approach to improve the detect performance of liquid biopsies is to intensively inspect circulome and to define integrated biomarkers which simultaneously profile circulating tumor cells and DNA, extracellular vesicles, and circulating DNA, or cell free DNA and proteins. Moreover, the diagnostic validity and accuracy of liquid biopsies still need to be comprehensively demonstrated and validated.
早期发现和诊断是成功治疗胰腺癌和改善患者预后的关键。然而，由于缺乏早期症状和胰腺癌的侵袭性，其 5 年生存率仍低于 5%。与组织样本相比，液体活检在临床环境中具有微创、重复采样、完全代表整个或多部位肿瘤肿块的优势。许多研究证明了液体活检在胰腺癌中的潜力，证明液体活检能够检测到胰腺癌细胞的早期紧急情况、残留疾病和复发。更有趣的是，它们显示出描绘胰腺癌的异质性、时空特征的潜力。然而，液体活检的诊断性能在不同的研究中差异很大，这取决于所使用的技术以及肿瘤的类型和阶段。一种提高液体活检检测性能的方法是深入检查循环组，并定义综合生物标志物，同时对循环肿瘤细胞和 DNA、细胞外囊泡和循环 DNA 或无细胞 DNA 和蛋白质进行分析。此外，液体活检的诊断有效性和准确性仍需要全面证明和验证。
