RT Dissertation/Thesis
T1 Functional Characterization of Circulating Tumour Cell (CTC) Clusters in Breast Cancer
A1 Martínez Pena, Inés
K1 Breast cancer
K1 Metastasis
K1 CTC
K1 CTC clusters
AB Breast cancer (BC) is the most common malignancy in women and thesecond leading cause of cancer-related deaths. Most cancer-related deaths are due to metastasis, a process bywhich tumour cells spread to secondary sites. Circulating tumour cells (CTCs) are those tumour cells that arereleased into the bloodstream, and they are the responsible for the formation of metastases. CTCs can be found asindividual cells, or as small groups of cells, called CTC clusters. CTC clusters have a higher metastatic potentialthan individual CTCs. However, there is little knowledge about the biology of CTC clusters due to their lowfrequency in the blood of BC patients. The objective of this thesis project is to conduct a comparative studybetween individual CTCs and CTC clusters, to further study the biology of CTC clusters and to determine thedifferential characteristics that provide them with greater metastatic potential. The isolation of CTC clusters fromsamples of BC patients not only allowed us to confirm the prognostic value of CTC clusters but also to optimizeworkflows that maximise the detection of CTC clusters. The development of in vitro models of CTC clusters andtheir later functional/molecular characterization showed that these models properly recapitulated the phenotypicfeatures of the CTC clusters isolated from patient samples. The combination of the tools presented in this thesiscan contribute to overcome the restrictions derived from the low frequency of CTC clusters in patient samples andallow a deeper understanding about the role of CTC clusters during metastasis.
YR 2021
FD 2021
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10347/27242
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10347/27242
LA eng
DS Minerva
RD 27 abr 2026