Institute of Biotechnology, Life Sciences Center, Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania.
Adv Exp Med Biol. 2022;1379:499-524. doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-04039-9_20.
Currently, cancer is the leading cause of death and its incidence and mortality is growing rapidly all over the world. One of the confounding factors contributing to the failure of conventional cancer diagnostics and treatment strategies is a high degree of intratumoral and intertumoral heterogeneity at the single-cell and molecular levels. Recent innovations in microfluidic techniques have revolutionized single-cell and single-molecule research and challenged the conventional definition of a "biomarker." Alongside classic cancer biomarkers such as circulating tumor DNA or circulating tumor cells (CTC), tumor cell heterogeneity, transcriptional and epigenetic cell states and their abundance in the tumor microenvironment have been demonstrated to impact disease progression and treatment response. Utilizing high-throughput, robust microfluidic techniques for the detection, isolation, and analysis of various cancer biomarkers, valuable information about the tumor can be obtained for clinical decision-making. This chapter presents clinically relevant advances of cancer biomarker research using microfluidics technology and identifies the emerging applications for disease diagnosis, monitoring, and personalized treatment.
目前，癌症是导致死亡的主要原因，其发病率和死亡率在全球范围内迅速增长。导致传统癌症诊断和治疗策略失败的一个复杂因素是单细胞和分子水平的肿瘤内和肿瘤间异质性程度很高。微流控技术的最新创新彻底改变了单细胞和单分子研究，并对传统的“生物标志物”定义提出了挑战。除了循环肿瘤 DNA 或循环肿瘤细胞 (CTC) 等经典癌症生物标志物外，肿瘤细胞异质性、转录和表观遗传细胞状态及其在肿瘤微环境中的丰度已被证明会影响疾病进展和治疗反应。利用高通量、稳健的微流控技术检测、分离和分析各种癌症生物标志物，可以为临床决策提供有价值的肿瘤信息。本章介绍了使用微流控技术进行癌症生物标志物研究的临床相关进展，并确定了用于疾病诊断、监测和个性化治疗的新兴应用。
