Department of Cell Biology, The Scripps Research Institute, 10550 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA.
Phys Biol. 2012 Feb;9(1):016003. doi: 10.1088/1478-3975/9/1/016003. Epub 2012 Feb 3.
Hematologic spread of carcinoma results in incurable metastasis; yet, the basic characteristics and travel mechanisms of cancer cells in the bloodstream are unknown. We have established a fluid phase biopsy approach that identifies circulating tumor cells (CTCs) without using surface protein-based enrichment and presents them in sufficiently high definition (HD) to satisfy diagnostic pathology image quality requirements. This 'HD-CTC' assay finds >5 HD-CTCs mL(-1) of blood in 80% of patients with metastatic prostate cancer (n = 20), in 70% of patients with metastatic breast cancer (n = 30), in 50% of patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer (n = 18), and in 0% of normal controls (n = 15). Additionally, it finds HD-CTC clusters ranging from 2 HD-CTCs to greater than 30 HD-CTCs in the majority of these cancer patients. This initial validation of an enrichment-free assay demonstrates our ability to identify significant numbers of HD-CTCs in a majority of patients with prostate, breast and pancreatic cancers.
癌细胞在血液中的播散导致无法治愈的转移；然而，癌细胞在血液中的基本特征和迁移机制尚不清楚。我们已经建立了一种流体相活检方法，该方法无需使用基于表面蛋白的富集即可识别循环肿瘤细胞 (CTC)，并以足够高的清晰度 (HD) 呈现，以满足诊断病理学图像质量要求。该“HD-CTC”检测方法在 80%的转移性前列腺癌患者 (n = 20)、70%的转移性乳腺癌患者 (n = 30)、50%的转移性胰腺癌患者 (n = 18) 中发现超过 5 HD-CTCs mL(-1) 的血液，而在正常对照组 (n = 15) 中则未发现。此外，它在大多数这些癌症患者中发现了从 2 HD-CTCs 到大于 30 HD-CTCs 的 HD-CTC 簇。该无富集检测方法的初步验证表明，我们有能力在大多数前列腺癌、乳腺癌和胰腺癌患者中识别出大量的 HD-CTC。
