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Dear Friends and Colleagues,

It is our great pleasure to invite basic and clinical researchers interested in the field of Circulating Tumour Cells to the second "Advances in Circulating Tumor Cells (ACTC): From Basic Research to Clinical Practice" meeting. The meeting will be held in Crete Greece, on October 8th to 11th 2014.

After successfully organizing the "Advances in Circulating Tumor Cells (ACTC): From Basic Research to Clinical Practice" meeting on September 2012 (www.actc2012.org) and the very positive feedback that we got from most participants we organize a second meeting, this time in Crete, Greece.

Detection of Circulating Tumor Cells (CTC) in peripheral blood can serve as a "liquid biopsy" approach and has emerged as one of the hottest fields in cancer research. Nowadays, CTC molecular characterization has a strong potential to be translated into individualized targeted treatments. A variety of analytical systems are continuously been developed for CTC isolation, detection and molecular characterization. CTC molecular characterization at the single cell level holds considerable promise for the identification of therapeutic targets and resistance mechanisms in CTCs as well as for the stratification of patients and real-time monitoring of systemic therapies.

The ACTC meeting is focused on the potential of CTC as a liquid biopsy by bringing together researchers and clinicians to discuss practical implementation of CTCs and translate much of the excellent basic research in this field into clinical practice. The most prominent and established researchers in the field will present state of the art research on the biology of metastasis and on the technical advancements in the isolation, detection and molecular characterization of CTCs. Latest findings on the clinical applications of CTCs in real time monitoring of systemic anticancer therapies will be discussed. A particular emphasis will be given on the relationship of CTCs to cancer stem cells and the relevance of recent findings for the development and use of new targeted therapies in oncology.

Our main aim is to organize a meeting where latest research will be presented by prominent and established researchers in the field and which will bring together and stimulate intense discussions between basic and clinical researchers in the field. Many leading professionals in the Metastasis Biology and CTC field have already enthusiastically confirmed their participation in ACTC 2014.

We are looking forward to welcoming you and your colleagues in Crete, on October 2014,

Warm regards,

Dimitris Mavroudis, University of Crete, Greece

Evi S. Lianidou, University of Athens, Greece

Klaus Pantel, University of Hamburg, Germany