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Circulating Tumor Cells as a Tool to Untangle the Breast Cancer Heterogeneity Issue

Breast cancer (BC) is a disease characterized by high degrees of heterogeneity at morphologic, genomic, and genetic levels, even within the same tumor mass or among patients. As a consequence, different subpopulations coexist and less represented clones may have a selective advantage, significantly...

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Autores principales: Rossi, Tania, Gallerani, Giulia, Martinelli, Giovanni, Maltoni, Roberta, Fabbri, Francesco
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8466266/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34572427
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biomedicines9091242
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author Rossi, Tania
Gallerani, Giulia
Martinelli, Giovanni
Maltoni, Roberta
Fabbri, Francesco
author_facet Rossi, Tania
Gallerani, Giulia
Martinelli, Giovanni
Maltoni, Roberta
Fabbri, Francesco
author_sort Rossi, Tania
collection PubMed
description Breast cancer (BC) is a disease characterized by high degrees of heterogeneity at morphologic, genomic, and genetic levels, even within the same tumor mass or among patients. As a consequence, different subpopulations coexist and less represented clones may have a selective advantage, significantly influencing the outcome of BC patients. Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) represent a rare population of cells with a crucial role in metastatic cascade, and in recent years have represented a fascinating alternative to overcome the heterogeneity issue as a “liquid biopsy”. However, besides the raw enumeration of these cells in advanced epithelial tumors, there are no CTC-based assays applied in the clinical practice to improve personalized medicine. In this review, we report the latest findings in the field of CTCs for intra-tumoral heterogeneity unmasking in BC, supporting the need to deepen their analysis to investigate their role in metastatic process and include the molecular characterization in the clinical practice. In the future, CTCs will be helpful in monitoring patients during treatment, as well as to better address therapeutic strategies.
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spelling pubmed-84662662021-09-27 Circulating Tumor Cells as a Tool to Untangle the Breast Cancer Heterogeneity Issue Rossi, Tania Gallerani, Giulia Martinelli, Giovanni Maltoni, Roberta Fabbri, Francesco Biomedicines Review Breast cancer (BC) is a disease characterized by high degrees of heterogeneity at morphologic, genomic, and genetic levels, even within the same tumor mass or among patients. As a consequence, different subpopulations coexist and less represented clones may have a selective advantage, significantly influencing the outcome of BC patients. Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) represent a rare population of cells with a crucial role in metastatic cascade, and in recent years have represented a fascinating alternative to overcome the heterogeneity issue as a “liquid biopsy”. However, besides the raw enumeration of these cells in advanced epithelial tumors, there are no CTC-based assays applied in the clinical practice to improve personalized medicine. In this review, we report the latest findings in the field of CTCs for intra-tumoral heterogeneity unmasking in BC, supporting the need to deepen their analysis to investigate their role in metastatic process and include the molecular characterization in the clinical practice. In the future, CTCs will be helpful in monitoring patients during treatment, as well as to better address therapeutic strategies. MDPI 2021-09-16 /pmc/articles/PMC8466266/ /pubmed/34572427 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biomedicines9091242 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Review
Rossi, Tania
Gallerani, Giulia
Martinelli, Giovanni
Maltoni, Roberta
Fabbri, Francesco
Circulating Tumor Cells as a Tool to Untangle the Breast Cancer Heterogeneity Issue
title Circulating Tumor Cells as a Tool to Untangle the Breast Cancer Heterogeneity Issue
title_full Circulating Tumor Cells as a Tool to Untangle the Breast Cancer Heterogeneity Issue
title_fullStr Circulating Tumor Cells as a Tool to Untangle the Breast Cancer Heterogeneity Issue
title_full_unstemmed Circulating Tumor Cells as a Tool to Untangle the Breast Cancer Heterogeneity Issue
title_short Circulating Tumor Cells as a Tool to Untangle the Breast Cancer Heterogeneity Issue
title_sort circulating tumor cells as a tool to untangle the breast cancer heterogeneity issue
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8466266/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34572427
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biomedicines9091242
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