Prostate Cancer Disseminated Tumor Cells are Rarely Detected in the Bone Marrow of Patients with Localized Disease Undergoing Radical Prostatectomy across Multiple Rare Cell Detection Platforms.

Purpose: Prostate circulating tumor cells escape into peripheral blood and enter bone marrow as disseminated tumor cells, representing an early step before conventionally detectable metastasis. It is unclear how frequently this occurs in localized disease and existing detection methods rely on epithelial markers with low specificity and sensitivity. We used multiple methodologies of disseminated tumor cell detection in bone marrow harvested at radical prostatectomy.