Richter Florian, Röder Christian, Möller Thorben, Egberts Jan-Hendrik, Becker Thomas, Sebens Susanne
Department of General, Visceral-, Thoracic-, Transplantation- and Pediatric Surgery, University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein (UKSH), Campus Kiel, 24105 Kiel, Germany.
Institute for Experimental Cancer Research, Kiel University (CAU) and University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein (UKSH), Campus Kiel, 24105 Kiel, Germany.
Cancers (Basel). 2022 Mar 1;14(5):1279. doi: 10.3390/cancers14051279.
Detection of circulating (CTC) or disseminated tumor cells (DTC) are correlated with negative prognosis in esophageal cancer (EC) patients. In this study, DTC- and CTC-associated markers CK20 and DEFA5 were determined by RT-PCR in EC patients and correlated with clinical parameters to determine their prognostic impact. The blood and bone marrow (BM) of 216 EC patients after tumor resection with or without neoadjuvant therapy and as control blood samples from 38 healthy donors and BM from 24 patients with non-malignant diseases were analyzed. Both markers were detected in blood and BM of EC patients and the control cohort. A cut-off value was determined to define marker positivity for correlation with clinical data. CK20 expression was detected in 47/206 blood samples and in 49/147 BM samples of EC patients. DEFA5 positivity was determined in 96/206 blood samples and 98/147 BM samples, not correlating with overall survival (OS). However, CK20 positivity in BM and DEFA5 negativity in blood were associated with reduced OS in EC patients without neoadjuvant therapy, while in patients with neoadjuvant therapy DEFA5 positivity in BM was associated with improved OS. Overall, our study suggests DEFA5 as a prognostic biomarker in liquid biopsies of EC patients which requires further validation.
循环肿瘤细胞（CTC）或播散肿瘤细胞（DTC）的检测与食管癌（EC）患者的不良预后相关。在本研究中，通过逆转录聚合酶链反应（RT-PCR）测定了EC患者中与DTC和CTC相关的标志物细胞角蛋白20（CK20）和防御素A5（DEFA5），并将其与临床参数相关联，以确定它们的预后影响。分析了216例接受或未接受新辅助治疗的肿瘤切除术后EC患者的血液和骨髓（BM），以及38名健康供体的对照血样和24例非恶性疾病患者的BM。在EC患者以及对照队列的血液和BM中均检测到这两种标志物。确定了一个临界值来定义标志物阳性，以便与临床数据相关联。在EC患者的47/206份血样和49/147份BM样本中检测到CK20表达。在96/206份血样和98/147份BM样本中确定DEFA5呈阳性，与总生存期（OS）无关。然而，在未接受新辅助治疗的EC患者中，BM中CK20阳性和血液中DEFA5阴性与OS降低相关，而在接受新辅助治疗的患者中，BM中DEFA5阳性与OS改善相关。总体而言，我们的研究表明DEFA5作为EC患者液体活检中的一种预后生物标志物，需要进一步验证。
