上皮性卵巢癌（EOC）是女性第八大常见癌症，也是妇科癌症死亡的主要原因，主要原因是缺乏有效的筛查工具、诊断时已处于晚期以及高复发率。循环肿瘤细胞（CTC）是一种罕见的肿瘤细胞亚群，从肿瘤传播并迁移到循环系统中，在转移级联中发挥着关键作用，因此有望作为疾病监测和预测的生物标志物。从液体活检中探索 CTC 对于研究和临床实践来说是一种颇具吸引力的方法，因为它具有微创性，有利于连续采样并能够捕获血液中循环的所有癌细胞。 CTC 计数的预后用途已获得 FDA 批准，可用于转移性乳腺癌、前列腺癌和结直肠癌的临床应用。然而，本文讨论的 EOC 独特的生物学特性，使 CTC 研究中固有的检测和表征复杂性变得更加复杂，从而阻碍了临床应用的进展。本综述的目的是概述在 EOC 中利用 CTC 的力量时遇到的生物学和临床挑战。版权所有 © 2024 作者。由 Elsevier B.V. 出版。保留所有权利。

Epithelial ovarian carcinoma (EOC) is the eighth most common cancer in women and the leading cause of gynaecological cancer death, predominantly due to the absence of effective screening tools, advanced stage at diagnosis, and high rates of recurrence. Circulating tumour cells (CTCs), a rare subset of tumour cells that disseminate from a tumour and migrate into the circulation, play a pivotal role in the metastatic cascade, and therefore hold promise as biomarkers for disease monitoring and prognostication. Exploring CTCs from liquid biopsies is an appealing approach for research and clinical practice, given it is minimally invasive, facilitates serial sampling and enables the capture of the entire spectrum of cancer cells circulating in the blood. The prognostic utility of CTC enumeration has been FDA-approved for clinical use in metastatic breast, prostate, and colorectal cancers. However, the unique biology of EOC, discussed herein, compounds the detection and characterisation complexities already inherent in CTC research, consequently hindering progress towards clinical applications. The aim of this review is to provide an overview of both the biological and clinical challenges encountered in harnessing the power of CTCs in EOC.Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.