Uen Yih-Huei, Lin Shiu-Ru, Wu Chan-Han, Hsieh Jan-Sing, Lu Chien-Yu, Yu Fang-Jung, Huang Tsung-Jen, Wang Jaw-Yuan
Department of Surgery, Chi-Mei Hospital, Tainan, and Department of Clinical Laboratory, Kaohsiung Medical University, Taiwan.
Clin Chim Acta. 2006 May;367(1-2):55-61. doi: 10.1016/j.cca.2005.11.013. Epub 2006 Jan 5.
Recently, several reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) techniques have been proven to be useful in the detection of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in cancer patients. We attempted to detect CTCs in patients with gastric cancer (GC) using a RT-PCR assay for c-Met and MUC1 and to evaluate their clinical value.
Using a RT-PCR assay, c-Met and MUC1 mRNAs were amplified in 52 GC patients and 36 healthy individuals. Analyses were carried out for their correlation with the patients' clinicopathologic features, the occurrence of new post-operative metastasis, as well as the overall survival rates.
In the RT-PCR analysis of peripheral blood, 61.5% (32/52) and 71.2% (37/52) of GC patients were positive for c-Met and MUC1 mRNA, respectively. The sensitivity and specificity of either mRNA detected in peripheral blood is 82.7% and 86.1%, respectively, with an accuracy of 84.1%. The detection of c-Met or MUC1 mRNA was significantly correlated with the depth of tumor invasion, lymph node metastases, TNM stage, vessel invasion, perineural involvement, and post-operative metastasis (all P<0.05). Kaplan-Meier analysis demonstrated that the overall survival rate of patients with positive c-Met or MUC1 mRNA expression in the peripheral blood was significantly shorter than in patients negative for c-Met or MUC1 mRNA expression (both P<0.05).
Our findings suggest that using RT-PCR for the detection of c-Met or MUC1 mRNA may be a promising tool for the early detection of micro-metastatic CTCs in GC patients. Combination of these 2 tumor-specific mRNA markers would increase the detection rate and may be clinically helpful in predicting the outcome in GC patients.
最近，几种逆转录-聚合酶链反应（RT-PCR）技术已被证明可用于检测癌症患者循环肿瘤细胞（CTC）。我们尝试使用针对c-Met和MUC1的RT-PCR检测法来检测胃癌（GC）患者的CTC，并评估其临床价值。
采用RT-PCR检测法，对52例GC患者和36例健康个体的c-Met和MUC1 mRNA进行扩增。分析它们与患者临床病理特征、术后新转移灶的发生以及总生存率的相关性。
在外周血的RT-PCR分析中，GC患者中分别有61.5%（32/52）和71.2%（37/52）的c-Met和MUC1 mRNA呈阳性。外周血中检测到的任一mRNA的敏感性和特异性分别为82.7%和86.1%，准确率为84.1%。c-Met或MUC1 mRNA的检测与肿瘤浸润深度、淋巴结转移、TNM分期、血管浸润、神经周围侵犯以及术后转移均显著相关（均P<0.05）。Kaplan-Meier分析表明，外周血中c-Met或MUC1 mRNA表达阳性患者的总生存率显著低于c-Met或MUC1 mRNA表达阴性的患者（均P<0.05）。
我们的研究结果表明，使用RT-PCR检测c-Met或MUC1 mRNA可能是早期检测GC患者微转移CTC的一种有前景的工具。这两种肿瘤特异性mRNA标志物的联合使用将提高检测率，可能有助于临床预测GC患者的预后。
