Ex Vivo Culture of CTCs: An Emerging Resource to Guide Cancer Therapy

With increasing application of targeted therapies and the development of acquired resistance, much attention is being focused on developing in vitro and in vivo patient-specific tumor models for individualized therapeutic evaluation of cancers. Circulating tumor cells provide a source of noninvasively and sequentially sampled invasive cancer cells suitable for propagation in vitro. We review the advantages and challenges associated with ex vivo culture of tumor cells circulating in the blood of patients with cancer.