MAINTRAC CIRCULATING TUMOUR CELL BLOG
The world's first CTC blog for practitioners and their patients
Chemotherapy is a mainstay of tumour therapy. The current treatment guidelines for prescribing a treatment rests heavily on how a treatment or treatment combination has fared statistically, in terms of rates of cancer comeback and survival without cancer spread. The protocol does not include testing the efficacy of the drug against the unique nature of a person's tumour.
Each person's cancer is unique...
A biomarker is a short way of saying 'biological marker.' By definition, biomarkers are biological indicators of the existence of either a physiological (normal) or pathogenic (disease) process, or pharmacological response. Biomarkers include things like cells and proteins, and/or specific sequences of DNA, mRNA transcripts, non-coding RNAs.
From the time malignant tumours have reached a size of two milimetres, they release thousands of malignant cells into the circulation. Most of these cells die or get kiled off. The more aggressive ones survive and remain in the bloodstream as 'Circulating Tumour Cells,' abbreviated as CTCs. These cells have the potential to...
