Digital Circulating Tumor Cell Analyses for Prostate Cancer Precision Oncology

In this issue ofCancer Discovery, Miyamoto and colleagues adapted their microfluidic CTC-iChip isolation platform with a digital RNA-PCR readout for eight prostate-specific transcripts and two assays for the androgen receptor mRNA splice variantARV7and theTMPRSS2-ERGtranslocation transcript. In patients with metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer at initiating abiraterone therapy in a first-line setting, the resulting RNA-based digital circulating tumor cell signatures identified patients with a shorter overall survival, and in patients with clinically localized disease, the signatures identified those with seminal vesicle invasion and pelvic lymph node involvement.Cancer Discov; 8(3); 269-71. ©2018 AACR.See related article by Miyamoto et al., p. 288.

Cancer discovery. 2018 Mar [Epub]

Ellen Heitzer, Michael R Speicher

Institute of Human Genetics, Diagnostic and Research Center for Molecular BioMedicine, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria., Institute of Human Genetics, Diagnostic and Research Center for Molecular BioMedicine, Medical University of Graz, Graz, Austria. .