近年来，卓越的技术进步使得从患者血样中鉴定和审问罕见循环肿瘤细胞（CTC）成为可能，从而催生了新的研究领域，为基于液体活检的临床应用带来了变革的承诺。对CTCs的分析揭示了明显的生物表型，包括CTC集群的存在以及CTCs与免疫或基质细胞之间的相互作用，影响了转移形成，并为癌症易感性提供了新的见解。在这里，我们回顾了在了解CTCs生物特征方面所做出的进展，提供了利用这些发展来设计未来临床工具以改善癌症诊断和治疗的见解。 © 2022. Springer Nature Limited.

In recent years, exceptional technological advances have enabled the identification and interrogation of rare circulating tumour cells (CTCs) from blood samples of patients, leading to new fields of research and fostering the promise for paradigm-changing, liquid biopsy-based clinical applications. Analysis of CTCs has revealed distinct biological phenotypes, including the presence of CTC clusters and the interaction between CTCs and immune or stromal cells, impacting metastasis formation and providing new insights into cancer vulnerabilities. Here we review the progress made in understanding biological features of CTCs and provide insight into exploiting these developments to design future clinical tools for improving the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.© 2022. Springer Nature Limited.