Emerging Biology of Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) in Cancer Detection and Chemotherapy

Abstract

Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) are present in the blood of all types of cancer patients, and originate from primary tumors and metastasis. Migration and cell adhesion of these cells det. the future site of cancerous growth in the distant organ. The presence of CTCs in the blood could be used to develop suitable biomarkers to detect cancers that are difficult to diagnose, such as pancreatic, lung, brain and ovarian cancer. Isolating single CTCs from blood combined with mol. profiling using Nextgen sequencing could identify genes, miRNA or noncoding RNA to diagnose any cancer and provide significant clues for its treatment. To eradicate cancer, it is essential to kill all CTCs in the blood of cancer patients. Chemotherapy is the only way to treat them, since tumor surgery and radiation therapy are unable to completely remove them. However, very limited information is available about their biol., mol. mechanisms of spreading, cell adhesion and their overall responsiveness to different types of chemotherapy. Recently, an efflux of report indicates that studying CTCs biol. with Nextgen genomic technologies is emerging as an important field for the detection and treatment of cancer. [on SciFinder(R)]