Clinical applications of circulating tumor DNA and circulating tumor cells in pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is the most frequent pancreatic cancer type and is characterized by a dismal prognosis due to late diagnosis, local tumor invasion, frequent distant metastases and poor sensitivity to current therapy. In this context, circulating tumor cells and circulating tumor DNA constitute easily accessible blood-borne tumor biomarkers that may prove their clinical interest for screening, early diagnosis and metastatic risk assessment of PDAC. Moreover these markers represent a tool to assess PDAC mutational landscape.

Source: Molecular Oncology - January 22, 2016 Category: Cancer & Oncology Authors: Francesca Riva, Oleksii I. Dronov, Dmytro I. Khomenko, Florence Huguet, Christophe Louvet, Pascale Mariani, Marc-Henri Stern, Olivier Lantz, Charlotte Proudhon, Jean-Yves Pierga, Francois-Clement Bidard Tags: Review Source Type: research