Breast cancer (BC) is a disease characterized by high degrees of heterogeneity at morphologic, genomic, and genetic levels, even within the same tumor mass or among patients. As a consequence, different subpopulations coexist and less represented clones may have a selective advantage, significantly influencing the outcome of BC patients. Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) represent a rare population of cells with a crucial role in metastatic cascade, and in recent years have represented a fascinating alternative to overcome the heterogeneity issue as a "liquid biopsy". However, besides the raw enumeration of these cells in advanced epithelial tumors, there are no CTC-based assays applied in the clinical practice to improve personalized medicine. In this review, we report the latest findings in the field of CTCs for intra-tumoral heterogeneity unmasking in BC, supporting the need to deepen their analysis to investigate their role in metastatic process and include the molecular characterization in the clinical practice. In the future, CTCs will be helpful in monitoring patients during treatment, as well as to better address therapeutic strategies.
Keywords: breast cancer; circulating tumor cells; heterogeneity; liquid biopsy.