Burchill S A, Bradbury F M, Selby P, Lewis I J
Candlelighters Children's Research Laboratory, St James' University Hospital, Leeds, U.K.
Eur J Cancer. 1995;31A(4):553-6. doi: 10.1016/0959-8049(95)00053-l.
Disseminating disease in neuroblastoma is of considerable clinical importance. Detection of circulating neuroblastoma cells using tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) as a tissue-specific target for reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction has proved to be a sensitive and specific method for the detection of contaminating tumour cells in peripheral blood. The aim of this study was to report the early clinical observations made using this technology in neuroblastoma patient blood samples. A strong association was found between the detection of neuroblastoma cells in circulation with the detection of neuroblastoma in bone marrow. This method may be of use to monitor disease status and identify early signs of relapse in clinically disease-free patients. These results show that RT-PCR detection of TH mRNA is a relatively noninvasive, sensitive method for the detection of circulating tumour cells in neuroblastoma patients.
神经母细胞瘤中的疾病播散具有相当重要的临床意义。使用酪氨酸羟化酶（TH）作为逆转录聚合酶链反应的组织特异性靶点来检测循环中的神经母细胞瘤细胞，已被证明是检测外周血中污染肿瘤细胞的一种灵敏且特异的方法。本研究的目的是报告使用该技术对神经母细胞瘤患者血样进行早期临床观察的结果。发现循环中神经母细胞瘤细胞的检测与骨髓中神经母细胞瘤的检测之间存在密切关联。该方法可能有助于监测疾病状态，并识别临床无病患者复发的早期迹象。这些结果表明，RT-PCR检测TH mRNA是一种相对非侵入性、灵敏的检测神经母细胞瘤患者循环肿瘤细胞的方法。
