Circulating exosomes may provide an alternate platform to monitor disease progression compared to circulating tumor cells

Authors:

Traci Pawlowski, David Spetzler, Teresa Tinder, Jeff Kimbrough, Ta Deng, Joon Kim, Philip Ellis, Annemarie Tyrell and Christine Kuslich

Background

Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) have been used to monitor disease progression in patients with different types of metastatic cancer. However, only 50% of metastatic breast, 57% of metastatic prostate cancer, and 18% of metastatic colon cancer blood specimens have adequate levels of CTCs for clinical laboratory analysis. Levels of exosomes, have recently been shown to correlate with tumor progression.

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