Detection of Circulating Tumor Cells in Breast Cancer Patients Using Cytokeratin-19 Real-Time RT-PCR.

Purpose: The roles of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) as predictive and prognostic factors, as well as key mediators in the metastatic cascade, have been investigated. This study aimed to validate a method to quantify CTCs in peripheral blood using a real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay for cytokeratin (CK)-19 and to evaluate the utility of this assay in detecting CTCs in breast cancer patients.

Materials And Methods: Real-time monitoring PCR of fluorescently labeled specific hybridization probes for CK-19 mRNA was established.