Analysis of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) holds promise to diagnose cancer or monitor its development. Among the methods, counting CTC numbers in blood samples could be the simplest way to implement it. Nevertheless, its clinical utility has not yet been fully accepted. The reasons could be due to the rarity and heterogeneity of CTCs in blood samples that could lead to misleading results from assays only based on single CTC counts. To address this issue, a feasible direction is to combine the CTC counts with other clinical data for analysis. Recent studies have demonstrated the use of this new strategy for early detection and prognosis evaluation of cancers, or even for the distinguishment of cancers with different stages. Overall, this approach could pave a new path to improve the technical problems in the clinical applications of CTC counting techniques. In this review, the information relevant to CTCs, including their characteristics, clinical use of CTC counting, and technologies for CTC enrichment, were first introduced. This was followed by discussing the challenges and new perspectives of CTC counting techniques for clinical applications. Finally, the advantages and the recent progress in combining CTC counts with other clinical parameters for clinical applications have been discussed.
循环肿瘤细胞（CTCs）的分析在癌症诊断及病情监测方面展现出广阔前景。其中，对血液样本中CTCs进行计数可能是最为简便的实现方式。然而，该方法在临床实践中的应用价值尚未得到充分认可。究其原因，可能在于血液样本中CTCs的稀有性和异质性，仅基于单一CTC计数的检测方法可能导致误导性结果。为解决这一问题，将CTC计数与其他临床数据相结合进行分析成为可行方向。近期研究已证实，这种新策略可用于癌症早期检测与预后评估，甚至能区分不同分期的癌症。总体而言，该方法有望为改善CTC计数技术在临床应用中的技术难题开辟新路径。本综述首先介绍了CTCs的相关信息，包括其特性、CTC计数的临床应用以及CTC富集技术；随后探讨了CTC计数技术在临床应用中所面临的挑战与新视角；最后，重点论述了将CTC计数与其他临床参数相结合在临床应用中的优势及最新进展。
肿瘤(癌症)患者之家