Publisher Correction: Pulmonary venous circulating tumor cell dissemination before tumor resection and disease relapse.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Pulmonary venous circulating tumor cell dissemination before tumor resection and disease relapse.

Approximately 50% of patients with early-stage non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who undergo surgery with curative intent will relapse within 5 years. Detection of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) at the time of surgery may represent a tool to identify patients at higher risk of recurrence for whom more frequent monitoring is advised. Here we asked whether CellSearch-detected pulmonary venous CTCs (PV-CTCs) at surgical resection of early-stage NSCLC represent subclones responsible for subsequent disease relapse.

Molecular analysis of single circulating tumour cells following long-term storage of clinical samples.

The CellSearch semiautomated CTC enrichment and staining system has been established as the 'gold standard' for CTC enumeration with CellSearch CTC counts recognized by the FDA as prognostic for a number of cancers. We and others have gone on to show that molecular analysis of CellSearch CTCs isolated shortly after CellSearch enrichment provides another valuable layer of information that has potential clinical utility including predicting response to treatment. Although CellSearch CTCs can be readily isolated after enrichment, the process of analysing a single CellSearch patient sample, which may contain many CTCs, is both time-consuming and costly.