RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Circulating tumour cells and the epithelial mesenchymal transition in colorectal cancer
JF Journal of Clinical Pathology
JO J Clin Pathol
FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and Association of Clinical Pathologists
SP 848
OP 853
DO 10.1136/jclinpath-2014-202499
VO 67
IS 10
A1 S H-S Lim
A1 T M Becker
A1 W Chua
A1 W L Ng
A1 P de Souza
A1 K J Spring
YR 2014
UL http://jcp.bmj.com/content/67/10/848.abstract
AB Circulating tumour cells (CTCs) hold great potential as liquid biopsies to prognosticate disease and guide treatment in colorectal cancer. However, their emerging role in determining the molecular phenotype of tumour metastasis carries even more promising clinical use in the provision of comprehensive biomarker detection for targeted therapies and determination of drug resistance. The isolation of CTCs is technology dependent, and in the case of epithelial cell adhesion molecule-based platforms, the ability to detect cells that have undergone the epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) is ineffective. CTCs displaying a mesenchymal phenotype are believed to have an increased metastatic potential. The rarity of CTCs provides another challenge in the enumeration of these cells. The future will likely involve the analysis of individual CTCs at any stage of the EMT in order to provide real-time phenotypic and molecular snapshots capable of tracking the dynamic evolution of tumour progression over time.