Liquid Biopsies: Handle With Care

Abstract

Possibly the first mention of the term ‘liquid biopsy’ (as it is understood today) in
the scientific literature appears in a report about the 7th International Symposium on Minimal
Residual Cancer (ISMRC) held in Athens, Greece in 2009.1 The symposium had focused on,
among other things, Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) and their relationship to Cancer Stem
Cells (CSCs). In that symposium, it was reported that Howard Scher of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center described the application of CTCs in the evaluation of therapies directed at castration-resistant prostate cancer, as a ‘liquid biopsy’. With time, the term has slowly
gained popularity: as of 24th January, 2016, 237 PubMed articles have the term ‘liquid biopsy’
in the title or the abstract.