COMMENTS


Further thoughts from our survey respondents


Please see below some additional comments submitted by the Spotlight on circulating tumor cells survey respondents. Why don’t you share your comments on Oncology Central, or Tweet us @OncologyCentral?


While this survey focused on CTCs, I believe cfDNA as well as extracellular vesicles/exosomes merit identical levels of attention, rigorous evaluation, and standardization of research protocols so researchers and clinicians can have more confidence conducting these types of biomarker studies in clinical trials for various solid tumors (some cfDNA studies may be more likely to yield clinical utility due to higher abundance of cfDNA in certain tumors versus others).


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It’s critical to progress for CTC researchers to share unpublished data & best practice on enrichment platforms and CTC staining/ characterization.


Have enough very fundamental, and importantly also comparable, CTC enumeration studies been conducted such that the scientific community can now reliably and confidently understand the relative frequency of detecting CTCs (above a certain threshold, e.g., 1:1,000,000, etc.) in each of the major solid cancers? This uncertainty (around what % of patients will actually have actionable CTC samples for analysis) is a big barrier to drug development, currently.


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