The rare circulating tumor microemboli as a biomarker contributes to predicting early colorectal cancer recurrences after medical treatment.

Transl Res

Department of Engineering and System Science, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan; Department of Chemistry, Frontier Research Center on Fundamental and Applied Sciences of Matters, National Tsing-Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan; Research Center for Applied Sciences, Taipei, Taiwan. Electronic address:

Published: January 2024

AI Article Synopsis

  • Researchers are trying to find better ways to predict if colorectal cancer will come back after treatment, focusing on rare bits of cancer cells found in blood tests.
  • They used special technology to look for these cancer cells and studied how well different tests could predict cancer return.
  • The study found that certain cancer markers in blood, especially CTM and CA19-9, can help doctors spot cancer relapses early and improve patient care.

Article Abstract

Early prognosis of cancer recurrence remains difficult partially due to insufficient and ineffective screening biomarkers or regimes. This study evaluated the rare circulating tumor microemboli (CTM) from liquid biopsy individually and together with circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and serum CEA/CA19-9 in a panel, on early prediction of colorectal cancer (CRC) recurrence. Stained CTCs/CTM were detected by a microfluidic chip-based automatic rare-cell imaging platform. ROC, AUC, Kaplan-Meier survival, and Cox proportional hazard models regarding 4 selected biomarkers were analyzed. The relative risk, odds ratio, predictive accuracy, and positive/negative predictive value of biomarkers individually and in combination, to predict CRC recurrence were assessed and preliminarily validated. The EpCAMHochestCD45 CTCs/CTM could be found in all cancer stages, where more recurrences were observed in late-stage cases. Significant correlations between CTCs/CTM with metastatic stages and clinical treatment were illustrated. CA19-9 and CTM could be seen as independent risk factors in patient survivals, while stratified patients by grouped biomarkers on the Kaplan-Meier analyses presented more significant differences in predicting CRC recurrences. By monitoring the panel of selected biomarkers, disease progressions of 4 CRC patients during follow-up visits after first treatments within 3 years were predicted successfully. This study unveiled the value of rare CTM on clinical studies and a panel of selected biomarkers on predicting CRC recurrences in patients at the early time after medical treatment, in which the CTM and serum CA19-9 could be applied in clinical surveillance and CRC management to improve the accuracy.

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Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.trsl.2023.07.011DOI Listing

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