Hematologic spread of carcinoma results in incurable metastasis; yet, the basic characteristics and travel mechanisms of cancer cells in the bloodstream are unknown.
We have established a fluid phase biopsy approach that identifies circulating tumor cells (CTCs) without using surface protein-based enrichment and presents them in sufficiently high definition (HD) to satisfy diagnostic pathology image quality requirements. This 'HD-CTC' assay finds >5 HD-CTCs mL-1 of blood in 80% of patients with metastatic prostate cancer (n = 20), in 70% of patients with metastatic breast cancer (n = 30), in 50% of patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer (n = 18), and in 0% of normal controls (n = 15). Additionally, it finds HD-CTC clusters ranging from 2 HD-CTCs to greater than 30 HD-CTCs in the majority of these cancer patients. This initial validation of an enrichment-free assay demonstrates our ability to identify significant numbers of HD-CTCs in a majority of patients with prostate, breast and pancreatic cancers.
Written by:
Marrinucci D, Bethel K, Kolatkar A, Luttgen MS, Malchiodi M, Baehring F, Voigt K, Lazar D, Nieva J, Bazhenova L, Ko AH, Korn WM, Schram E, Coward M, Yang X, Metzner T, Lamy R, Honnatti M, Yoshioka C, Kunken J, Petrova Y, Sok D, Nelson D, Kuhn P. Are you the author?
Department of Cell Biology, The Scripps Research Institute, 10550 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA.
Reference: Phys Biol. 2012 Feb;9(1):016003.
doi: 10.1088/1478-3975/9/1/016003
PubMed Abstract
PMID: 22306768
