The development of the sequencing technologies allowed the generation of huge amounts of molecular data from a single cancer specimen, allowing the clinical oncology to enter the era of the precision medicine. This massive amount of data is highlighting new details on cancer pathogenesis but still relies on tissue biopsies, which are unable to capture the dynamic nature of cancer through its evolution. This assumption led to the exploration of non-tissue sources of tumoral material opening the field of liquid biopsies. Blood, together with body fluids such as urines, or stool, from cancer patients, are analyzed applying the techniques used for the generation of omics data. With blood, this approach would allow to take into account tumor heterogeneity (since the circulating components such as CTCs, ctDNA, or ECVs derive from each cancer clone) in a time dependent manner, resulting in a somehow “real-time” understanding of cancer evolution. Liquid biopsies are beginning nowdays to be applied in many cancer contexts and are at the basis of many clinical trials in oncology.

测序技术的发展使得单个癌症标本能够产生大量的分子数据，使临床肿瘤学进入精准医疗时代。如此大量的数据凸显了癌症发病机制的新细节，但仍然依赖于组织活检，而组织活检无法通过其进化来捕捉癌症的动态本质。这一假设导致了对肿瘤材料非组织来源的探索，开辟了液体活检领域。应用用于生成组学数据的技术对癌症患者的血液以及尿液或粪便等体液进行分析。对于血液，这种方法可以以时间依赖的方式考虑肿瘤异质性（因为 CTC、ctDNA 或 ECV 等循环成分源自每个癌症克隆），从而以某种方式“实时”了解癌症进化。液体活检现已开始应用于许多癌症领域，并且是许多肿瘤学临床试验的基础。