An Interdisciplinary Approach to Reducing Opioid Prescriptions to Patients with Chronic Pain in a Spinal Cord Injury Center.

Background: The increasing use of prescription opioids has contributed to the epidemic of opioid abuse in the United States. Efforts to reduce opioid prescriptions and offer alternatives for pain management are needed.

Objective: To determine the success of a multidisciplinary project to manage chronic pain while reducing reliance on opioids in a population of patients with spinal cord injury (SCI).

Enrichment, Isolation and Molecular Characterization of EpCAM-Negative Circulating Tumor Cells.

The presence of EpCAM-positive circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the peripheral blood is associated with poor clinical outcomes in breast, colorectal and prostate cancer, as well as the prognosis of other tumor types. In addition, recent studies have suggested that the presence of CTCs undergoing epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition and, as such, may exhibit reduced or no expression of epithelial proteins e.g.

Isolation and characterization of circulating tumor cells using a novel workflow combining the CellSearch system and the CellCelector.

Circulating tumor cells (CTC) are rare cells which have left the primary tumor to enter the blood stream. Although only a small CTC subgroup is capable of extravasating, the presence of CTCs is associated with an increased risk of metastasis and a shorter overall survival. Understanding the heterogeneous CTC biology will optimize treatment decisions and will thereby improve patient outcome.

EpCAM-Independent Enrichment of Circulating Tumor Cells in Metastatic Breast Cancer.

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are the potential precursors of metastatic disease. Most assays established for the enumeration of CTCs so far-including the gold standard CellSearch-rely on the expression of the cell surface marker epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM). But, these approaches may not detect CTCs that express no/low levels of EpCAM, e.