Premium
Beyond Capture: Circulating Tumor Cell Release and Single‐Cell Analysis
Author(s) -
Wu Lingling,
Xu Xing,
Sharma Bineet,
Wang Wei,
Qu Xin,
Zhu Lin,
Zhang Huimin,
Song Yanling,
Yang Chaoyong
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
small methods
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.66
H-Index - 46
ISSN - 2366-9608
DOI - 10.1002/smtd.201800544
Subject(s) - circulating tumor cell , liquid biopsy , computer science , precision medicine , microfluidics , computational biology , metastasis , nanotechnology , cancer , biology , medicine , pathology , materials science
As the most promising “liquid biopsy”, analysis of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) provides noninvasive access to obtain biological information of solid tumors. It not only advances the understanding of the mechanisms underlying tumor metastasis, relapse, and chemoresistance, but also promotes the development of precision medicine. Over the past decade, the rapid advances in micro/nanomaterials and microfluidics have overcome the technical challenges of capturing CTCs, allowing efficient enrichment and sensitive detection. Beyond the capture of CTCs, major challenges of in‐depth CTC analysis are the release of CTCs from capture platforms and the inherent heterogeneity in CTCs. A variety of technologies have now emerged for release and single‐cell analysis of CTCs. This review focuses on recent progress along this direction. First, different release strategies are outlined and discussed, including their design principles and characteristics (merits and limitations). Then, existing methods for single CTC analysis at the genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, and functional level are summarized. Finally, some perspectives are provided on current development trends, future research directions, and challenges of CTC studies.