Emerging Technologies in CTC Detection: Revolutionizing Cancer Management and Treatment

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are tumor cells released from primary, metastatic, or recurrent tumors into the peripheral blood and responsible for metastasis. They are also useful as a biomarker for cancer, influencing researchers to focus on early detection, enumeration, and isolation of CTCs due to their demonstrated substantial advantages in clinical theragnostic. Detection and isolation of CTCs are particularly challenging because of their extreme rarity and heterogeneity. Although new CTC enrichment and detection techniques have been continuously developed in recent years, enabling deeper analysis of CTC biology and clinical significance, none have yet achieved the “gold” standard. Even the FDA‐approved CellSearch™ suffers from low capture accuracy, high expense, and time consumption. Nowadays, liquid biopsy has become a more convenient and noninvasive method than traditional tissue biopsy in cancer patient management. It is used to develop predictive biomarkers, in addition to prognostication. In a broad spectrum, CTC detection methods can be categorized as label‐dependent (based on positive enrichment using cell surface markers such as epithelial cell adhesion molecule or EpCAM) and label‐independent (based on negative enrichment, considering size or other differential biophysical properties of CTCs). CTCs have provided critical insights into the metastasis process and will continue to do so, potentially leading to the creation of a brand‐new cancer treatment system. In this review article, we provide an overview of the most modern methods for CTC detection and isolation, along with their significance in cancer management. The review also outlines further prospects for advancements in the field. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT04556916, NCT03511859, NCT02380196, and NCT05127096