Han Tuo, Zhang Juanjuan, Xiao Dong, Yang Binhui, Chen Liang, Zhai Chao, Ding Feifei, Xu Yue, Zhao Xiaoyu, Zhao Jiangman
Department of Oncological Surgery, 3201 Hospital Affiliated to Xi'an Jiaotong University School of Medicine, Hanzhong 723000, Shaanxi, China.
Department of Surgical Oncology, Quanzhou First Hospital Affiliated to Fujian Medical University, Quanzhou 362000, China.
J Oncol. 2022 Aug 28;2022:5247423. doi: 10.1155/2022/5247423. eCollection 2022.
Circulating tumor-derived endothelial cell (CTEC) is a new potential tumor biomarker to be associated with cancer development and treatment efficacy. However, few evidences are available for breast cancer.
Eighty-nine breast cancer patients were recruited, and preoperative and postoperative blood samples were collected. Besides, 20 noncancer persons were enrolled as controls. An improved subtraction enrichment and immunostaining-fluorescence in situ hybridization (SE-iFISH) method was adopted to codetect CD31+ aneuploid CTEC and CD31- aneuploid circulating tumor cell (CTC). Then, the clinical significance of CTCs and CTECs on breast cancer screening and prognosis prediction was evaluated and compared.
The positive rate of CTCs and CTECs in newly diagnosed breast cancer patients was 68.75% and 71.88%. Among detected aneuploid circulating rare cells, CTEC accounts for a greater proportion than CTC in breast cancer patients. CTEC-positive rate and level were significantly higher in breast cancer patients with lymph node metastasis (LNM) than those without LNM (=0.043), while there was no significant difference in CTC. CTEC (area under the curve, AUC = 0.859) had better performance than CTC (AUC = 0.795) to distinguish breast cancer patients from controls by receiver operator characteristic curve analysis. Preoperative CTEC count ≥ 2 was a significant risk factor for reducing PFS of breast cancer patients.
CTECs may function as a reliable supplementary biomarker in breast cancer screening and prognosis prediction.
循环肿瘤来源的内皮细胞（CTEC）是一种与癌症发展和治疗效果相关的新型潜在肿瘤生物标志物。然而，关于乳腺癌的证据很少。
招募了89例乳腺癌患者，收集术前和术后血样。此外，纳入20名非癌症患者作为对照。采用改进的消减富集和免疫染色荧光原位杂交（SE-iFISH）方法同时检测CD31 +非整倍体CTEC和CD31-非整倍体循环肿瘤细胞（CTC）。然后，评估并比较CTCs和CTECs在乳腺癌筛查和预后预测中的临床意义。
新诊断乳腺癌患者中CTC和CTEC的阳性率分别为68.75%和71.88%。在检测到的非整倍体循环稀有细胞中，乳腺癌患者中CTEC的比例高于CTC。有淋巴结转移（LNM）的乳腺癌患者的CTEC阳性率和水平显著高于无LNM的患者（P = 0.043），而CTC无显著差异。通过受试者工作特征曲线分析，CTEC（曲线下面积，AUC = 0.859）在区分乳腺癌患者与对照方面比CTC（AUC = 0.795）表现更好。术前CTEC计数≥2是降低乳腺癌患者无进展生存期的重要危险因素。
CTECs可能作为乳腺癌筛查和预后预测中一种可靠的补充生物标志物。
