OncoTargets and Therapy (Nov 2019)
The Role Of Circulating Tumor DNA In Therapeutic Resistance
Abstract
Chenxin Xu,1,* Haixia Cao,2,* Chen Shi,1 Jifeng Feng1 1The Affiliated Cancer Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Jiangsu Cancer Hospital & Jiangsu Institute of Cancer Research, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, People’s Republic of China; 2Research Center for Clinical Oncology, Jiangsu Cancer Hospital & Jiangsu Institute of Cancer Research & The Affiliated Cancer Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Jifeng FengThe Affiliated Cancer Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Jiangsu Cancer Hospital & Jiangsu Institute of Cancer Research, 42 Baiziting, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, People’s Republic of ChinaTel +86 02583283584Fax +86 02583283588Email [email protected]: The application of precision medicine in cancer treatment has partly succeeded in reducing the side effects of unnecessary chemotherapeutics and in improving the survival rate of patients. However, with the long-term use of therapy, the dynamically changing intratumoral and intertumoral heterogeneity eventually gives rise to therapeutic resistance. In recent years, a novel testing technology (termed liquid biopsy) using circulating tumor DNAs (ctDNAs) extracted from peripheral blood samples from patients with cancer has brought about new expectations to the medical community. Using ctDNAs, clinicians can trace the heterogeneity pattern to duly adjust individual therapy and prolong overall survival for patients with cancer. Technological advances in detecting and characterizing ctDNAs (eg, development of next-generation sequencing) have provided clinicians with a valuable tool for genotyping tumors individually and identifying genetic and epigenetic alterations of the entire tumor to capture mutations associated with therapeutic resistance.Keywords: cancer, heterogeneity, drug resistance, targeted therapies, sequencing technologies
