循环肿瘤细胞的间充质表型与乳腺癌患者的远处转移相关。

Mesenchymal phenotype of circulating tumor cells is associated with distant metastasis in breast cancer patients.

作者信息

Zhang Shirong, Wu Tiecheng, Peng Xinguo, Liu Jian, Liu Fang, Wu Shiyang, Liu Suyan, Dong Yan, Xie Shujun, Ma Shenglin

机构信息

Translational Medicine Research Center, Hangzhou First People's Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Hangzhou, China.

Department of Oncology, PKUCare Luzhong Hospital, Zibo, China.

出版信息

Cancer Manag Res. 2017 Nov 23;9:691-700. doi: 10.2147/CMAR.S149801. eCollection 2017.

In this study, we investigated the relationship between the epithelial-mesenchymal transition phenotype of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and distant metastasis in breast cancer patients. We analyzed the expression of epithelial (epithelial cell adhesion molecule, cytokeratin [CK]8, CK18 and CK19) and mesenchymal (vimentin and TWIST1) markers in CTCs from a large cohort of Chinese breast cancer patients (N=1083) using Canpatrol™ CTC assays. We identified CTCs in 84.9% (920/1083) of the breast cancer patients enrolled in this study. Among these 920 patients, 547 showed epithelial CTCs, 793 showed biphenotypic CTCs and 516 showed mesenchymal CTCs. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves demonstrated circulation of both biphenotypic and mesenchymal CTCs (area under ROC curve value: 0.728; sensitivity: 68.7% and specificity: 71.6%) in patients was associated with distant metastasis. These findings demonstrate that the epithelial-mesenchymal transition phenotype of CTCs is a potential biomarker predictive of distant metastasis in breast cancer.

在本研究中，我们调查了乳腺癌患者循环肿瘤细胞（CTC）的上皮-间质转化表型与远处转移之间的关系。我们使用Canpatrol™ CTC检测法，分析了一大群中国乳腺癌患者（N = 1083）的CTC中上皮标志物（上皮细胞粘附分子、细胞角蛋白[CK]8、CK18和CK19）和间质标志物（波形蛋白和TWIST1）的表达。我们在本研究纳入的84.9%（920/1083）的乳腺癌患者中检测到了CTC。在这920例患者中，547例显示上皮型CTC，793例显示双表型CTC，516例显示间质型CTC。受试者工作特征（ROC）曲线表明，患者中双表型和间质型CTC的循环（ROC曲线下面积值：0.728；敏感性：68.7%，特异性：71.6%）与远处转移相关。这些发现表明，CTC的上皮-间质转化表型是预测乳腺癌远处转移的潜在生物标志物。