Circulating Tumor Cell Detection Technologies and Clinical Utility: Challenges and Opportunities
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Updated: Dec 13, 2025
Adaptation of Semiautomated Circulating Tumor Cell CTC Assays for Clinical and Preclinical Research Applications
Published on: February 28, 2014
Zeina Habli1, Walid AlChamaa1, Raya Saab2,3
1Neural Engineering and Nanobiosensors Group, Biomedical Engineering Program, Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, American University of Beirut, Beirut 1107 2020, Lebanon.
Abstract:
The potential clinical utility of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the diagnosis and management of cancer has drawn a lot of attention in the past 10 years. CTCs disseminate from tumors into the bloodstream and are believed to carry vital information about tumor onset, progression, and metastasis. In addition, CTCs reflect different biological aspects of the primary tumor they originate from, mainly in their genetic and protein expression. Moreover, emerging evidence indicates that CTC liquid biopsies can be extended beyond prognostication to pharmacodynamic and predictive biomarkers in cancer patient management. A key challenge in harnessing the clinical potential and utility of CTCs is enumerating and isolating these rare heterogeneous cells from a blood sample while allowing downstream CTC analysis. That being said, there have been serious doubts regarding the potential value of CTCs as clinical biomarkers for cancer due to the low number of promising outcomes in the published results. This review aims to present an overview of the current preclinical CTC detection technologies and the advantages and limitations of each sensing platform, while surveying and analyzing the published evidence of the clinical utility of CTCs.
