Abstract: Objective To explore the significance of the quantity and phenotype of the circulating tumor cells（CTCs） to the disease characteristics of non-small cell lung cancer. Methods Twenty-nine advanced lung adenocarcinomas and adenosquamous carcinoma patients were enrolled in this clinical trial. General information and disease status was collected. The former contained the characteristics of age， gender， whether smoking and family history of cancer, and the latter included the characteristics of pathological type， lump location， TNM stage， T stage， N stage， M stage and the metastases in different organs. CanpatrolTMCTC was applied to count the number of CTCs， and the CTCs were divided into three subtypes including epithelial CTCs， biphenotypic CTCs， mesenchymal CTCs. Meanwhile the patients should be checked by computed tomograhy， bone scanning， brain MRI， abdominal ultrasonography and positron emission computed tomography within one month. Mann-Whitney U test or KruskalWallis H test was conducted to analyze the data， and the statistical significance was performed. ResultsTwentyfive patients were detected with CTCs most of which were biphenotypic CTCs. Among the 25 patients， 19 patients were found with bone metastases which were the most common organ that occurring metastases. The total CTCs and biphenotypic CTCs were performed with statistical significance in initialtorelapse patients（P＜0.05）. The enumeration of epithelial CTCs were performed with statistical significance in age， TNM stage， M stage， N stage， extrapulmonary metastases, bone metastases and vertebra metastasis（P＜0.05）. The mesenchymal CTCs were showed statistical significance in the appearance of mediumlarge pleural effusion（P＜0.05）. Conclusion The biphenotypic CTCs were the most common type in late stage of NSCLC. The epithelial CTCs have positive correlation with the TNM stage of advanced lung cancer， M stage and bone metastases. Bone is the most common organ that CTCs is apt to home.