Fig. 3.

Isolation, detection, and characterization of CTCs and the associated clinical value. CTCs are firstly isolated from peripheral blood by size-, morphology-, and antibody-based methods. Then, several methods can be used to detect CTCs from isolating products or further characterize CTCs by analyzing cellular components or morphology. CTC analysis can provide a range of information such as CTC enumeration, molecular phenotypes, mutations, proteomics and metabolomics to analyze patient heterogeneity, drug resistance and risk of progression, which is widely used for early and differential diagnosis, prognostic assessment, treatment schedule selecting, and evaluation of treatment efficacy