Detection of isolated tumor cells by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism for K-ras mutations in tissue samples of 199 colorectal cancer patients.

The aim of this study was to identify K-ras mutations as marker for isolated tumor cells in liver, lymph node, and bone marrow specimens of colorectal cancer patients. To detect these, a PCR-RFLP assay was used with a sensitivity exceeding that of routine histopathology by at least 1 order of magnitude. In addition, the ratio of mutated versus wild-type alleles was determined by an internal standard. Of 199 patients, 74 (37.5%) were found to bear a K-ras-positive tumor. Of these, 60 (81%) were mutated in codon 12 and 14 (19%) in codon 13 (P < 0.001). In addition, 14 organs were found K-ras positive, 13 of which were from 12 patients with a K-ras-positive tumor (16%) and 1 from a patient with a K-ras-negative tumor (0.8%). Eight patients exhibited liver involvement and 6 showed lymph node involvement. Remarkably, no bone marrow specimen was found K-ras positive (P < 0.017 versus liver involvement). Sequence analysis of tumor DNA revealed that GGT (Gly) was replaced by GAT (Asp; 35%), GTT (Val; 32%), AGT (Ser; 13%), GCT (Ala; 10%), TGT (Cys; 8%), and CGT (Arg; 2%) for codon 12, and by GAC (Asp) as the only type of mutation for codon 13. In colorectal carcinomas the ratio of K-ras mutated versus wild-type alleles ranged over 4 orders of magnitude (10(0)-10(-4), median: 10(-2)) and was correlated with both, residual tumor load (R1/2; P = 0.028) and distant metastasis (M1; P = 0.057). These results show that detection of K-ras mutated alleles by PCR-RFLP in patients with colorectal carcinoma may aid in the identification of isolated tumor cells. High ratios of K-ras alleles were correlated with certain negative prognostic parameters (R,M). In accord with its function as a primary filter for colorectal carcinoma cells, the liver was more often contaminated with K-ras-positive cells than bone marrow.