Open Access<p>Advances in the Detection Technologies and Clinical Applications of Circulating Tumor DNA in Metastatic Breast Cancer</p>
Author(s) -
Hao Liao,
Huiping Li
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
cancer management and research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.024
H-Index - 40
ISSN - 1179-1322
DOI - 10.2147/cmar.s249041
Subject(s) - liquid biopsy , metastatic breast cancer , circulating tumor cell , breast cancer , medicine , circulating tumor dna , cancer , oncology , metastasis , drug resistance , disease , cancer research , biology , microbiology and biotechnology
Breast cancer (BC) represents the most commonly diagnosed cancer among females worldwide. Although targeted therapy has greatly improved the efficacy of treating BC, a large proportion of BC patients eventually develop recurrence or metastasis. Traditional invasive tumor tissue biopsy is short of comprehensiveness in tumor assessment due to heterogeneity. Liquid biopsy, an attractive non-invasive approach mainly including circulating tumor cell and circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), has been widely utilized in a variety of cancers with the advances of sequencing technologies in recent years. The ctDNA that is found circulating in body fluids refers to DNA released from tumor cells and has shown clinical utility in metastatic breast cancer (MBC). With the results of genomic variants detection, ctDNA could be used to predict clinical outcomes, monitor disease progression, and guide treatment for patients with MBC. Moreover, the drug resistance problem may be addressed by ctDNA detection. In this review, we summarized the technological developments and clinical applications of ctDNA in MBC.