Despite improvements in early detection and advances in treatment, patients with prostate cancer continue to die from their disease. Minimal residual disease after primary definitive treatment can lead to relapse and distant metastases, and increasing evidence suggests that circulating tumour cells (CTCs) and bone marrow-derived disseminated tumour cells (BM-DTCs) can offer clinically relevant biological insights into prostate cancer dissemination and metastasis. Using epithelial markers to accurately detect CTCs and BM-DTCs is associated with difficulties, and prostate-specific markers are needed for the detection of these cells using rare cell assays. Putative prostate-specific markers have been identified, and an optimized strategy for staining rare cancer cells from liquid biopsies using these markers is required. The ideal prostate-specific marker will be expressed on every CTC or BM-DTC throughout disease progression (giving high sensitivity) and will not be expressed on non-prostate-cancer cells in the sample (giving high specificity). Some markers might not be specific enough to the prostate to be used as individual markers of prostate cancer cells, whereas others could be truly prostate-specific and would make ideal markers for use in rare cell assays. The goal of future studies is to use sensitive and specific prostate markers to consistently and reliably identify rare cancer cells.

尽管在早期发现方面有所改善并且在治疗方面取得了进步，但是前列腺癌患者仍然死于疾病。初步确定治疗后残留病最少，可导致复发和远处转移，越来越多的证据表明，循环中的肿瘤细胞（CTC）和骨髓来源的弥散性肿瘤细胞（BM-DTC）可以为前列腺癌的传播和治疗提供与临床相关的生物学见解。转移。使用上皮标记物准确检测CTC和BM-DTC与困难有关，使用稀有细胞测定法检测这些细胞需要前列腺特异性标记物。已经确定了推定的前列腺特异性标志物，并且需要一种使用这些标志物对液体活检组织中的稀有癌细胞进行染色的优化策略。理想的前列腺特异性标志物将在整个疾病进展过程中在每个CTC或BM-DTC上表达（赋予高敏感性），而不在样品中的非前列腺癌细胞上表达（赋予高特异性）。一些标记可能对前列腺的特异性不足以用作前列腺癌细胞的单个标记，而另一些标记可能是真正的前列腺特异性标记，将成为用于稀有细胞测定的理想标记。未来研究的目标是使用敏感和特异性的前列腺标记物来一致，可靠地鉴定稀有癌细胞。一些标记可能对前列腺的特异性不足以用作前列腺癌细胞的单个标记，而另一些标记可能是真正的前列腺特异性标记，将成为用于稀有细胞测定的理想标记。未来研究的目标是使用敏感和特异性的前列腺标记物来一致，可靠地鉴定稀有癌细胞。一些标记可能对前列腺的特异性不足以用作前列腺癌细胞的单个标记，而另一些标记可能是真正的前列腺特异性标记，将成为用于稀有细胞测定的理想标记。未来研究的目标是使用敏感和特异性的前列腺标记物来一致，可靠地鉴定稀有癌细胞。