Circulating Tumor Cells in Cancers

Dear Colleagues,

This issue invites experts to contribute original research reports as well as review articles that describe studies on circulating tumor cells (CTC). Solid tumors derived from epithelial tissues (i.e., carcinomas) are responsible for 90% of all new cancers in Europe, including breast, prostate, lung and colorectal cancer. Present tumor staging is mainly based on local tumor extension, metastatic lymph node involvement and evidence of overt distant metastasis obtained by imaging technologies. However, these staging procedures are not sensitive enough to detect minute amounts of metastatic cells. Many teams have focused on the development of sensitive assays that allow the specific detection of single tumor cells in the blood of cancer patients. These methods allow the detection and characterization of early metastatic spread, provide unique insights into the biology of metastatic progression of human tumors and support the use of CTC blood tests as companion diagnostics and “liquid biopsy” in the context of therapeutic interventions.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Development of new technologies for isolation & detection of CTC
• Development of new approaches to characterize CTC at the molecular level
• Biology of CTC with a focus on cancer stem cell or cancer-initiating tumor cells, epithelial-to-mesenchymal (EMT) plasticity & cancer dormancy
• Clinical studies in different cancer types (i.e., breast, prostate, colon, lung, head & neck, melanoma, bladder cancer..) with emphasis on CTC as prognostic and predictive marker and as real-time liquid to unravel the dynamic changes in CTC during therapy (e.g., therapeutic targets and drug resistance pathways).

Prof. Klaus Pantel
Dr. Catherine Alix-Panabières
Guest Editors