Department of Chemical Biology
Yang's Lab,Department of Chemical Biology, Xiamen University
Professor Yang
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Professor
Department of Chemical Biology, Xiamen University
Contact Information
Yang's LaboratoryRoom 532, Lujiaxi Building, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, China
Ph: +86 (0) 592-218 7601cyyang@xmu.edu.cn
Review Article by Lingling Wu has been accepted by Small Methods
2019-01-26 07:42:15
As the most promising “liquid biopsy”, analysis of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) provides noninvasive access to obtain biology information of solid tumor. It not only advances the understanding of mechanisms underlying tumor metastasis, relapse, and chemoresistance, but also promotes the development of precision medicine. Over the past decade, the rapid advances in micro/nano-materials and microfluidics have overcome technical challenges of capturing CTCs, allowing efficient enrichment and sensitive detection. Beyond the capture of CTCs, major challenges of in-depth CTC analysis are the release of CTCs from capture platforms and the inherent heterogeneity in CTCs. A variety of technologies have now emerged for release and single-cell analysis of CTCs. This review focuses on recent progress along this direction. First, different release strategies are outlined and discussed, including their design principles and characteristics (merits and limitations). Then, existing methods for single CTC analysis at the genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic and functional level are summarized. Lastly, some perspectives are provided on current development trends, future research directions and challenges of CTC studies.
