Figure 1.

Cartoon representation of cancer circulome. Imagine observing a vessel coming from a tumor with a special magnifying glass. The vessel would appear as a lively neighborhood with the circulome components as main characters living their usual day. In front of a bakery and pizza restaurant, DNA nucleotides are pictured as kids accompanied by their teacher that are about to cross the road; they must pay attention to the red van (i.e., circulating tumor cell, CTC) that does not respect the highway code, unlike the colorful van (i.e., circulating cell, CC) that travels the road in peace. From the post office, the postman (i.e., mRNA) is ready to carry messages and letters, while on the other side of the road two young girls (i.e., extracellular vesicles, E.V.s) are doing a fast run on the sidewalk near an elegant lady in a blue dress (i.e., Interleukin-1) that is walking slowly with her little dog. On the lawn, in spite of the prohibitions, a bad looking guy (i.e., Tumor Derived Exosome, TDE) is running. Floating in the air, above all, an alien spacecraft (Tumor educated Platelet, TEP) mysteriously keeps track of the flow of time in this busy crossroad.