循環腫瘤細胞捕捉技術在癌症診斷之應用

The Application of Circulating Tumor Cells Detection in Cancer Diagnosis

癌症為國人十大死因之首，癌症的死亡率與是否能早期診斷息息相關。目前診斷癌症的主要方式為病理切片與影像判讀，癌症因子生化檢測方式則因為其靈敏度低而仍需搭配影像判讀輔助診斷，然而這些方法對於早期診斷癌症仍有其限制。有鑒於此，液態活檢在過去十年發展逐漸成熟，藉由捕捉釋放到血液中的癌細胞或分子，早期診斷癌症的發生，提高病患的生存機會。這篇文章介紹了一種液態活檢技術，用以偵測血液中的循環腫瘤細胞。此技術能夠藉由捕捉血液中的癌細胞，協助醫生診斷癌症以及後續的治療。

Cancer causes the most death in Taiwan. The mortality rate is correlated to the cancer stage. The earlier cancer diagnosed is the higher patient survival rate. Major cancer diagnosis methods are biopsy and image examination. The sensitivity of tumor marker detection for cancer diagnosis is very low. It needs to combine with image examination. However, these methods are limited in early cancer diagnosis. In the past decade, the liquid biopsy development is growth. According to the cancer cells or molecules detected in the blood, it helps to diagnose cancer earlier. Herein, we introduce a liquid biopsy method, circulating tumor cells (CTCs) detection. This method is used to detect cancer cells in the blood and help cancer prognosis and treatment.