Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2024 Jan 25:14:1303335.
doi: 10.3389/fonc.2024.1303335. eCollection 2024.

Research progress of CTC, ctDNA, and EVs in cancer liquid biopsy

Xiaoling Wang #  1   2 , Lijuan Wang #  1   2 , Haihong Lin  1   2 , Yifan Zhu  1   2 , Defa Huang  1 , Mi Lai  1 , Xuxiang Xi  1 , Junyun Huang  1   2 , Wenjuan Zhang  1   2 , Tianyu Zhong  1   2
Affiliations
Review

Research progress of CTC, ctDNA, and EVs in cancer liquid biopsy

Xiaoling Wang et al. Front Oncol. .

Abstract

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs), circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), and extracellular vehicles (EVs) have received significant attention in recent times as emerging biomarkers and subjects of transformational studies. The three main branches of liquid biopsy have evolved from the three primary tumor liquid biopsy detection targets-CTC, ctDNA, and EVs-each with distinct benefits. CTCs are derived from circulating cancer cells from the original tumor or metastases and may display global features of the tumor. ctDNA has been extensively analyzed and has been used to aid in the diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of neoplastic diseases. EVs contain tumor-derived material such as DNA, RNA, proteins, lipids, sugar structures, and metabolites. The three provide different detection contents but have strong complementarity to a certain extent. Even though they have already been employed in several clinical trials, the clinical utility of three biomarkers is still being studied, with promising initial findings. This review thoroughly overviews established and emerging technologies for the isolation, characterization, and content detection of CTC, ctDNA, and EVs. Also discussed were the most recent developments in the study of potential liquid biopsy biomarkers for cancer diagnosis, therapeutic monitoring, and prognosis prediction. These included CTC, ctDNA, and EVs. Finally, the potential and challenges of employing liquid biopsy based on CTC, ctDNA, and EVs for precision medicine were evaluated.

Keywords: CTC; EVs; biomarker; cancer; ctDNA; liquid biopsy; precision.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The liquid biopsy troika include CTCs, ctDNA and EVs. This figure shows the three detection techniques and their clinical applications.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

References

    1. Guan X. Cancer metastases: challenges and opportunities. Acta Pharm Sin B (2015) 5(5):402–18. doi: 10.1016/j.apsb.2015.07.005 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Alix-Panabières C, Pantel K. Liquid biopsy: from discovery to clinical application. Cancer discovery (2021) 11(4):858–73. doi: 10.1158/2159-8290.CD-20-1311 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Junqueira-Neto S, Batista IA, Costa JL, Melo SA. Liquid biopsy beyond circulating tumor cells and cell-free DNA. Acta cytologica (2019) 63(6):479–88. doi: 10.1159/000493969 - DOI - PubMed
    1. van de Stolpe A, Pantel K, Sleijfer S, Terstappen LW, den Toonder JM. Circulating tumor cell isolation and diagnostics: toward routine clinical use. Cancer Res (2011) 71(18):5955–60. doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-11-1254 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Schwarzenbach H, Hoon DS, Pantel K. Cell-free nucleic acids as biomarkers in cancer patients. Nat Rev Cancer (2011) 11(6):426–37. doi: 10.1038/nrc3066 - DOI - PubMed

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was supported by the Science and Technology Plan of Jiangxi Provincial Health Commission (202210863), Municipal level scientific research plan project of Ganzhou Municipal Health Commission (2022-2-62), Science and Technology Plan of Jiangxi Provincial Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine (2022B495).

LinkOut - more resources