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Circulating Tumor Cells in Prostate Cancer Diagnosis and Monitoring: An Appraisal of Clinical Potential

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Abstract

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) have emerged as a viable solution to the lack of tumor tissue availability for patients with a variety of solid tumors, including prostate cancer. Different approaches have been used to capture this tumor cell population and several of these techniques have been used to assess the potential role of CTCs as a biological marker to predict treatment efficacy and clinical outcome. CTCs are now considered a strong tool to understand the molecular characteristics of prostate cancer, and to be used and analyzed as a ‘liquid biopsy’ in the attempt to grasp the biological portrait of the disease in the individual patient.

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Acknowledgments and Disclosures

This work was supported in part by National Cancer Institute (NCI) grants CA062948, CA137020, and U54 CA143876. Luigi Portella was in part supported by the Associazione Italiana per la Ricerca sul Cancro (AIRC). Additional support was received from the Weill Cornell Clinical and Translational Science Center, the Prostate Cancer Foundation, and the Genitourinary Oncology Research Fund. The authors thank Matt Sung for kindly providing the images. The authors have no conflicts of interest that are directly relevant to the content of this article.

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  1. Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology and the Weill Cornell Cancer Center, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, USA

    Giuseppe Galletti, Luigi Portella, Scott T. Tagawa, Brian J. Kirby, Paraskevi Giannakakou & David M. Nanus

  2. Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Brian J. Kirby

  3. Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology and the Weill Cornell Cancer Center, Weill Cornell Medical College, 1305 York Avenue, Room 741, New York, NY, 10021, USA

    David M. Nanus

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  1. Giuseppe Galletti
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  2. Luigi Portella
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  3. Scott T. Tagawa
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  4. Brian J. Kirby
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  5. Paraskevi Giannakakou
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  6. David M. Nanus
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Correspondence to David M. Nanus.

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Galletti, G., Portella, L., Tagawa, S.T. et al. Circulating Tumor Cells in Prostate Cancer Diagnosis and Monitoring: An Appraisal of Clinical Potential. Mol Diagn Ther 18, 389–402 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40291-014-0101-8

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