Abstract
Circulating tumour cells (CTCs) have recently been identified as valuable biomarkers for diagnostic and prognostic evaluations, as well for monitoring therapeutic responses to treatments. CTCs are rare cells which may be present as one CTC surrounded by approximately 1 million white blood cells and 1 billion red blood cells per millilitre of peripheral blood. Despite the various challenges in CTC detection, considerable progress in detection methods have been documented in recent times, particularly for methodologies incorporating nanomaterial-based platforms and/or integrated microfluidics. Herein, we summarize the importance of CTCs as biological markers for tumour detection, highlight their mechanism of cellular invasion and discuss the various challenges associated with CTC research, including vulnerability, heterogeneity, phenotypicity and size differences. In addition, we describe nanomaterial agents used for electrochemistry and surface plasmon resonance applications, which have recently been used to selectively capture cancer cells and amplify signals for CTC detection. The intrinsic properties of nanomaterials have also recently been exploited to achieve photothermal destruction of cancer cells. This review describes recent advancements and future perspectives in the CTC field.
Highlights
Circulating tumour cells (CTCs) constitute an exceedingly small fraction of cells relative to a background of 1 million white blood cells (WBCs) and 1 billion red blood cells (RBCs) per millilitre of peripheral blood [1]
Their combined platforms increased CTC detection in the blood samples of 27 metastatic lung cancer patients to 41% as opposed to 15% detected by CellSearch only, which is indicative of a good outcome in the study [10,17]
With imprintable 3D and 4Da mechanoheterogeneity present at a single CTC level molecular profiling of CTCs heterogeneity and based assays into paper microfluidic technology for responsive environments, microfluidic devices and triple negative breast cancer research will multiplexed detection demonstrate some of the cell culture model expansion for culturing CTCs help reduce cost medical costs attainments of CTCs technology heterogeneity will lead to unprecedented breakthroughs, and better understanding of CTC
Summary
Circulating tumour cells (CTCs) constitute an exceedingly small fraction of cells relative to a background of 1 million white blood cells (WBCs) and 1 billion red blood cells (RBCs) per millilitre of peripheral blood [1]. CellSearch is based on the enrichment of CTCs using the EpCAM or negative depletion of leucocytes [1,10] This technology has recently been used to demonstrate the clinical relevance of CTCs as an independent and predictive marker for early breast cancer [11], prognostic evaluation remains widely conjectural for many reported clinical cases including: (i) non-metastatic colorectal cancer patients [12] and (ii) tumour cell recurrence in patients with localized prostate cancer [13]. When Wit et al combined platforms, they were able to capture (EpCAM−CTC) using a filtration and fluorescent staining protocol and EpCAM+CTC was captured with CellSearch technology Their combined platforms increased CTC detection in the blood samples of 27 metastatic lung cancer patients to 41% as opposed to 15% detected by CellSearch only, which is indicative of a good outcome in the study [10,17]. We cover the potential of nanotheranostics to provide future outpatient precision therapeutics for cancer
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