Molecular phenotyping of circulating tumour cells in patients with prostate cancer: prediction of distant metastases.

Unlabelled: What's known on the subject? and What does the study add? The role of circulating cancer cells in metastogenesis is generally accepted. Two forms of these cells have been reported in a number of studies, cancer cell clusters (CCCs) and individual epithelial cancer cells. Clusters appear at higher frequencies in the blood.

Clinical utility of antioxidant gene expression levels in circulating cancer cell clusters for the detection of prostate cancer in patients with prostate-specific antigen levels of 4-10 ng/mL and disease prognostication after radical prostatectomy.

Objectives: To test antioxidant genes (AOX) expression in circulating cancer cell clusters (CCC). A novel method using molecular, polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based detection of CCC was applied for predicting prostate cancer and to assess the effect of radical prostatectomy (RP) on reducing CCC and for prognostication of relapse-free survival (RFS), as serum total prostate-specific antigen (tPSA) has limited specificity at 4-10 ng/mL.

Patients And Methods: In all, 240 patients were enrolled in the study, 129 for tumour diagnosis and 111 after RP for disease prognostication.

Prognostic value of genomic alterations in minimal residual cancer cells purified from the blood of breast cancer patients.

The prognostic value of disseminated tumour cells derived from 353 breast cancer patients was evaluated. Disseminated tumour cells were purified from blood using a newly established method and nucleic acids were subsequently isolated. We investigated genomic imbalances (GI) such as mutation, amplification and loss of heterozygosity of 13 tumour suppressor genes and 2 proto-oncogenes using DNA from isolated minimal residual cancer cells.

Detection of mammaglobin expressing cells in blood of breast cancer patients.

Expression of human mammaglobin (hMAM) was published to be exclusively expressed in mammary tissue, in solid tumors, axillary lymph nodes and disseminated cancer cells in blood of breast cancer patients. A quantitative real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test was applied to investigate hMAM expression in blood of breast cancer patients. Mammaglobin mRNA expression was found not only in breast cancer cell lines but also in cell lines of other cancer origin.

Independent prognostication and therapy monitoring of breast cancer patients by DNA/RNA typing of minimal residual cancer cells.

Clinical relevance, purification techniques and molecular characterization of minimal residual cancer cells (MRCC) is a controversial topic in the literature. An analytical concept including a novel isolation procedure and a panel of tests for DNA and RNA typing of MRCCs is described and clinically evaluated in this paper. The purification procedure exploiting the physical characteristics of MRCCs shows superior performance leading to > 50% pure and viable tumor cells.