Circulating Tumor Cell Clusters in Patients with Metastatic Breast Cancer: a SWOG S0500 Translational Medicine Study.

Purpose: Metastasis requires malignant cell circulation from the primary to a distant tissue. Elevated levels of circulating tumor cells (CTC) portend a poor prognosis in breast and other cancers. Recent studies have suggested that CTC clusters may be a factor in the metastatic process. We conducted a prospective retrospective study of the SWOG0500 clinical trial to test whether CTC clusters are associated with poorer prognosis.

Experimental Design: CTC CellSearch galleries from SWOG0500 trial were reread using prespecified criteria for CTC clusters, doublets, and enumeration. Survival analysis methods include Kaplan-Meier plots and log-rank tests.

Results: Patients were classified into three prognostic subgroups based on baseline CTC/7.5 mL whole blood (WB): Arm A: <5CTC; Arm B/C: ≥5CTC and then B (<5CTC) and C (≥5CTC)/7.5 mL WB at first follow-up. At baseline, 19% of patients had CTC doublets or clusters, which were more likely in Arm B/C versus Arm A (38% vs. 1.4%; < 0.0001). Furthermore, doublets or clusters were significantly more common in patients who were ultimately assigned to Arm C versus B (54% vs. 25%; < 0.0001). In Arm C, doublets and clusters were associated with worse overall survival than only doublets, clusters, or no doublets nor clusters at baseline ( = 0.008) and first follow-up ( = 0.010). When compared with enumeration alone, doublets, clusters, or both were not prognostic in patients who had 5-19 or ≥20 CTC/7.5 mL WB.

Conclusions: In patients with metastatic breast cancer starting first-line chemotherapy, mortality is independent of the presence of CTC clusters, but rather depends on the number of CTC/7.5 mL WB.