循环肿瘤细胞上皮间质转化的研究进展

摘要

Cancer is the major disease threatening the human health.Most of patients with cancer deteri-orate or die due to metastasis.However,the transfer mechanism is not clear so far.The key role of circulating tumor cells has been widely recognized in the process of tumor metastasis since they are discovered and deeply studied.The low detection rate of circulating tumor cells has affected the progress of the study .An important reason is the changes of circulating tumor cells phenotype resulting from epithelial-mesenchymal transition. And the epithelial-mesenchymal transition is one of the factors that promote tumor metastasis.Therefore,the study of epithelial-mesenchymal transition in circulating tumor cells has been a key to the research of the tumor metastasis.%癌症是对人类健康和生命威胁最大的疾病，而转移是导致肿瘤患者病情进展甚至死亡的主要原因，但转移机制至今还不清楚。随着循环肿瘤细胞的发现及之后的深入研究，人们认识到其在肿瘤转移过程中起着关键性作用。但循环肿瘤细胞的低检出率一直影响着研究进展，其原因与上皮间质转化所致的细胞表型改变相关，同时上皮间质转化也是促进肿瘤转移的因素之一。因此，循环肿瘤细胞上皮间质转化的研究成为肿瘤转移研究的关键。