Department of Medical Cell BioPhysics, University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands.
Transl Oncol. 2012 Dec;5(6):486-91. doi: 10.1593/tlo.12247. Epub 2012 Dec 1.
The presence of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the blood of cancer patients may guide the use of therapy. We investigated how to evaluate a reduction in the number of CTCs after administration of therapy. CTCs were enumerated with the CellSearch system in 111 metastatic breast and 185 metastatic prostate cancer patients before start of a new line of chemotherapy and after initiation of therapy. Different means to express changes in CTC counts were evaluated with respect to overall survival (OS). A static CTC cutoff is the best method to determine whether a therapy is effective. This is exemplified by the highest Cox hazard ratio of 2.1 for OS; three methods to express relative differences performed worse. A lookup table is provided from which the significance of a change in CTCs can be derived. The aim of therapy should be the elimination of all CTCs. A period of 10 to 12 weeks of therapy is needed to reach the treatment effect on CTCs.
循环肿瘤细胞（CTCs）在癌症患者血液中的存在可能指导治疗的应用。我们研究了如何评估治疗后 CTC 数量的减少。在开始新的化疗线之前，用 CellSearch 系统对 111 例转移性乳腺癌和 185 例转移性前列腺癌患者进行了 CTC 计数，并在治疗开始后进行了计数。用不同的方法来表达 CTC 计数的变化与总生存期（OS）有关。静态 CTC 截点是确定治疗是否有效的最佳方法。这一点可以通过 Cox 风险比最高的 2.1 来证明，三种表达相对差异的方法表现较差。提供了一个查找表，可以从中得出 CTC 变化的意义。治疗的目的应该是消除所有的 CTCs。需要 10 到 12 周的治疗时间才能达到对 CTCs 的治疗效果。
