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Re: Ctc?
It would be important to develop a method of in vivo labelling of tumor cells in the circulation and to monitor their trafficking and homing to other sites. If these cells are viable and therefore able to disseminate, I think the most robust test to this end is to document their ability to metastasize.
There was a symposium in Washington DC in September of 2009, devoted entirely to the CTC technology. The cutoff is 5 tumor cells. Less than 5 means that things are going well. More than 5 means that things are going poorly. But you can see the difference between 4 and 6 is not all that great.
What they found out from that symposium was that it's perhaps useful as an adjunct to traditional methods for following tumor response, such as x-rays, blood tests, CTs, MRIs, history, physical exam, etc.
Some molecular tests do utilize living cells, but generally of individual cancer cells in suspension, sometimes derived from tumors and sometimes derived from circulating tumor cells. This was tried with the human clonogenic assay, which had been discredited long ago.
Again, traditionally, in-vitro (in lab) "cell-lines" have been studied in 2 dimensions (2D) which has inherent limitations in applicability to real life 3D in-vivo (in body) states.
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