Clinical relevance and biology of circulating tumor cells
Cet article passe en revue les travaux récents sur la biologie des cellules tumorales circulantes et leur intérêt clinique pour la prise en charge d'un cancer du sein
Most breast cancer patients die due to metastases, and the early onset of this multistep process is usually missed by current tumor staging modalities. Therefore, ultrasensitive techniques have been developed to enable the enrichment, detection, isolation and characterization of disseminated tumor cells (DTCs) in bone marrow and circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the peripheral blood of cancer patients. There is increasing evidence that the presence of these cells is associated with an unfavourable prognosis related to metastatic progression in the bone and other organs. This review focuses on investigations regarding the biology and clinical relevance of CTCs in breast cancer.
Breast Cancer Research , résumé, 2010