From Nanowerk Spotlight:
Early and accurate detection of cancer is critical for successful cancer therapies. In most cases, a tissue biopsy is the initial means of making a diagnosis. With increasing accuracy, liquid biopsies – where circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are isolated from blood samples – are becoming a viable complement or even alternative to invasive biopsies of metastatic tumors.CTC is of great interest for evaluating cancer dissemination, predicting patient prognosis, and also for the evaluation of therapeutic treatments, representing a reliable potential alternative to invasive biopsies and subsequent proteomic and functional genetic analysis.Unfortunately, given that human blood is a complex fluid that contains a variety of cells and metabolites, the fast detection of CTCs is quite a difficult task.
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