Possible applications of circulating tumor cells in patients with non small cell lung cancer

•CTCs have a recognized clinical relevance in breast, colorectal and prostate cancers.•Emerging data suggest that also in NSCLC patients CTCs may be an useful tool for diagnostic purposes and to monitor the impact of treatment.•The use of a non-invasive and repeatable method for diagnosis and disease monitoring could be estreamely useful in NSCLC patients, considering that an adequate tumor tissue is often difficult to obtain in these patients.•It is also possible to identify in CTCs genetic abnormalities, such as EGFR mutations or ALK translocation, that can be therapeutically targeted.•In the near future liquid biopsies could be routinely used to guide treatment decisions in NSCLC patients.

Recent experiences indicate that, as already reported for other types of cancer, circulating tumor cells (CTCs) may play a role also in non small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) for diagnosis, therapy monitoring and prognostic purposes. CTCs evaluation could be particularly relevant in this clinical setting not only for the objective difficulty in obtaining tumor tissue, but also because of the lack of reliable tumor markers. In the current review, we will focus on the possible applications of CTCs in NSCLC patients.