Abstract: Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are cancer cells shed from tumor into blood circulation. These cells are valuable in micrometastatic detection, disease assessment, and therapy and prognosis prediction of tumors. However, the clinical application of CTCs progresses slowly due to its rarity in the blood and difficulty for detection. Given the development of biological techniques, scholars have developed several new methods for enrichment and detection of CTCs. Aptamer-based method shows a good prospect in CTC application. In this method, CTCs can be rapidly and efficiently captured, nondestructively released, and qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed. This method can also be used to detect single and sub-groups of CTCs.