Optimizing Detection of Circulating Tumor Cells in Breast Cancer: Unveiling New Markers for Clinical Applications.

ABSTRACT: Breast cancer (BC) is a heterogeneous disease with high metastasis potential, especially in the bones, liver, and lungs. Circulating tumor cells (CTCs), which emerge from active tumors, represent an early step toward metastasis and are associated with poor prognosis. CTCs of carcinoma origin are believed to express EpCAM and cytokeratins (CKs), common epithelial markers that are frequently used to identify them. However, in practice, the most aggressive CTCs lose the expression of those markers, leading to the partial loss of important information. Thus, finding some novel markers that identify CTCs regardless of their heterogeneity is crucial. A specific bioinformatics workflow integrating primary tumor and diverse BC cell lines transcriptomic expression analysis was developed and compare

SUBMITTER: Mehtar A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12111556 | biostudies-literature | 2025 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature