Sequencing-based analysis of single circulating tumor cells (CTCs) has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of metastatic cancer and improve clinical care. Technologies exist to enrich, identify, recover, and sequence single cells, but to enable systematic routine analysis of single CTCs from a range of cancer patients, there is a need to establish processes that efficiently integrate these specific operations. Such engineered processes should address challenges associated with the yield and viability of enriched CTCs, the robust identification of candidate single CTCs with minimal degradation of DNA, the bias in whole-genome amplification, and the efficient handling of candidate single CTCs or their amplified DNA products. Advances in methods for single-cell analysis and nanoscale technologies suggest opportunities to overcome these challenges, and could create integrated platforms that perform several of the unit operations together. Ultimately, technologies should be selected or adapted for optimal performance and compatibility in an integrated process.

中文翻译：

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面向基于测序分析单个循环肿瘤细胞的工程过程。

基于测序的单个循环肿瘤细胞 (CTC) 分析有可能彻底改变我们对转移性癌症的理解并改善临床护理。存在丰富、识别、恢复和测序单个细胞的技术，但为了能够对来自一系列癌症患者的单个 CTC 进行系统的常规分析，需要建立有效整合这些特定操作的流程。此类工程过程应解决与富集 CTC 的产量和生存能力相关的挑战、以最小的 DNA 降解可靠识别候选单 CTC、全基因组扩增中的偏差，以及有效处理候选单 CTC 或其扩增的 DNA 产物. 单细胞分析方法和纳米级技术的进步为克服这些挑战提供了机会，并且可以创建集成平台，将多个单元操作一起执行。最终，应选择或调整技术以实现集成过程中的最佳性能和兼容性。