The clinical significance of circulating tumor cells in gastrointestinal cancer

Abstract

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are originated from the primary tumor lesion into the blood stream. CTCs could lead to recurrence of gastrointestinal (GI) cancers, even after a curative resection and colonizing in the distant organs to facilitate tumor distant metastasis; however, it has been challenging in clinic to detect CTCs for a long time, such as detection methodology or molecular markers for identification of CTCs. This review discussed the recent technical advances and biomarkers in the detection of CTCs and the molecular mechanism of CTC in cancer progression and metastasis. Moreover, novel concepts, such as cancer stem cells and epithelial-mesenchymal transition, could lead to CTCs and tumor progression and metastasis. Nevertheless, the involvement of CTCs varies greatly among cancer types in the GI and much remains to be learned. Thus, further study will provide more insightful information from a clinical and translational viewpoint to use CTCs for cancer early diagnosis or prediction of tumor recurrence and investigation of tumor progression and metastasis as well.

Keywords

Cancer stem cells / circulating tumor cells / epithelial-mesenchymal transition / gastrointestinal cancer / tumor progression and metastasis

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