RNA Profiles of Circulating Tumor Cells and Extracellular Vesicles for Therapy Stratification of Metastatic Breast Cancer Patients

Liquid biopsy methods are an exciting area in cancer screening, diagnosis, and management.  These methods are aimed at measuring genomic signatures of tumor cells in the blood.  They rely on detection of circulating tumor cells, tumor-derived extracellular vesicles, or exosomes, or cell-free circulating DNA.  Liquid biopsy methods have been proposed to compliment, enhance or perhaps even replace tissue biopsy in some scenarios.  Liquid biopsy methods are an exciting area in cancer screening, diagnosis, and management.  These methods are aimed at measuring genomic signatures of tumor cells in the blood.  They rely on detection of circulating tumor cells, tumor-derived extracellular vesicles, or exosomes, or cell-free circulating DNA.  Liquid biopsy methods have been proposed to compliment, enhance or perhaps even replace tissue biopsy in some scenarios.  

Beyond the minimal invasiveness, performing liquid biopsy may overcome some other weaknesses of tissue biopsy that are related to a single site’s inability to capture intratumor heterogeneity or be representative of all the changes within the tumor.  All three approaches to detect a tumor’s genetic material have been applied for therapy stratification and monitoring in breast cancer.  However, knowledge about the differences between these methods in the same patient cohort is limited.

An original article in the July 2018 issue of Clinical Chemistry compared messenger RNA profiles of circulating tumor cells and extracellular vesicles in patients with metastatic breast cancer to estimate the utility of each in therapy management.