Research Advances of Circulating Tumor Cells in Lung Cancer

Abstract

Metastasis is the main factor leading to the death of patients with lung cancer, and active prevention is the key to improve the efficacy of treatment. Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) play an important role in initiating metastasis. They trigger a series of metastatic cascade reactions at the moment of shedding from the primary focus, and finally colonize and proliferate in the distant target organs. In recent years, the detection technology of lung cancer CTCs has been continuously optimized. It can not only count CTCs, but also identify different subsets. CTCs detection of lung cancer can be used for early screening, the prediction of prognosis after surgery and chemoradiotherapy and the evaluation of curative effect of targeted immunotherapy. Dynamic monitoring of tumor heterogeneity is helpful to adjust personalized treatment plan and achieve the accurate treatment of cancer. Tian Jianhui's research group established the world's first circulating tumor cell line of human lung adenocarcinoma, integrated it into the theory of "positive deficiency and toxin" in the subclinical core pathogenesis of lung cancer, and actively promoted the construction of a specific research platform for lung cancer, in order to improve the research, prevention and control efficiency of lung cancer metastasis.

Keywords

• lung neoplasm
• circulating tumor cells
• metastasis
• detection
• clinic application