循环肿瘤细胞检测技术研究进展

The advances in the detection of circulating tumor cells

循环肿瘤细胞(circulating tumor cell,CTCs)与癌症转移密切相关,在癌症诊断中具有重要的意义。为了解CTCs的功能和分子特征以发展针对癌症有效的监测和治疗策略,从癌症患者外周血中捕获CTCs及提高捕获效率技术的研究是首要环节。本文总结了现有的CTCs富集技术、检测手段和它们用于离体培养的方法以及存在的问题。

Circulating tumor cells(CTCs) are the major cause of cancer metastasis and have important clinical significance in the diagnosis of cancer. Well understanding of the functional and molecular characteristics of CTCs is a basic stone for developping effective monitoration and treatment strategies for cancer, and the primary step is the research on techniques for capturing CTCs from peripheral blood of cancer patients and improving capture efficiency. This paper summarizes the existing CTCs enrichment techniques, detection methods and in vitro culture methods, as well as the disadvantages of these methods.