Monitoring of Circulating Tumor Cells by a Combination of Immunomagnetic Enrichment and RT-PCR in Colorectal Cancer Patients Undergoing Surgery.

BACKGROUND

The presence of circulating tumor cells (CTC) has been reported in patients with advanced colorectal cancer. Monitoring CTC (also known as a liquid-biopsy) has recently become the center of interest for low-invasive monitoring of cancer progression and predictive biomarkers testing. Along with high-cost technology and a complex methodology, a straightforward method based on magnetic beads enrichment followed by RT-PCR is set to allow for routine CTC analysis in colorectal cancer patients.

OBJECTIVES

The main purpose of this study was to evaluate the possibility of CTC detection in routine monitoring of patients starting before and continuing after surgery.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

The investigated group consisted of 30 patients mainly in advanced stages of colorectal cancer. In all patients, CTC detection was performed prior to surgery, in a subset of 14 patients additional sampling was done during and after surgery. In all cases, peripheral blood was processed using AdnaTest ColonCancer kit, which relies on enriching CTCs using EpCAM-functionalized magnetic beads and subsequently identifying tumorspecific CEA, EGFR and GA733-2 mRNA transcripts.

RESULTS

Out of all the tested samples, CTC were found in one patient suffering from advanced disease with lung and liver metastases. There, however, the positive finding was confirmed in 3 consecutive samples acquired before, during and shortly after palliative R2 resection.

CONCLUSIONS

The presence of CTC may be used to observe post-operative disease development. Due to the overall low CTC detection, further technology development may be necessary before its universal applicability to manage colorectal cancer patients.