Dai Charles S, Mishra Avanish, Edd Jon, Toner Mehmet, Maheswaran Shyamala, Haber Daniel A
Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research, Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02114, USA.
Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research, Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02114, USA; Center for Engineering in Medicine and Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02114, USA.
Cancer Cell. 2025 Aug 11;43(8):1399-1422. doi: 10.1016/j.ccell.2025.07.008. Epub 2025 Jul 31.
Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are cancer cells, shed from primary tumors or metastases into the bloodstream. The first non-invasive "liquid biopsy" for cancer monitoring, CTCs have been largely surpassed by circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) for clinical applications, given the ease of DNA sequencing without specialized cell isolation methods. However, emerging rare cell capture technologies that can process larger blood volumes and enable advanced single-cell analyses may enhance the range and potential of CTC-based biomarkers. CTCs are increasingly valuable for assessing tumor heterogeneity, guiding protein biomarker-driven cancer immune therapies, and assessing heterogeneous drug resistance, as well as for detecting minimal disease. CTCs, thus, remain central to understanding cancer dissemination and are poised to offer complementary diagnostic roles in the application of minimally invasive liquid biopsies for cancer. Here, we review recent advances in the study of these rare circulating cancer cells and discuss current limitations and future directions.
循环肿瘤细胞（CTCs）是从原发性肿瘤或转移灶脱落进入血液循环的癌细胞。作为癌症监测的首个非侵入性“液体活检”，鉴于DNA测序无需专门的细胞分离方法，在临床应用中，循环肿瘤细胞在很大程度上已被循环肿瘤DNA（ctDNA）超越。然而，新兴的稀有细胞捕获技术能够处理更大体积的血液并实现先进的单细胞分析，这可能会扩大基于CTCs的生物标志物的范围和潜力。CTCs在评估肿瘤异质性、指导蛋白质生物标志物驱动的癌症免疫治疗、评估异质性耐药性以及检测微小疾病方面的价值日益凸显。因此，CTCs对于理解癌症播散仍然至关重要，并且在微创液体活检用于癌症的应用中有望发挥补充诊断作用。在此，我们综述了这些稀有循环癌细胞研究的最新进展，并讨论了当前的局限性和未来方向。
