A comparative analysis of three different techniques for the detection of breast cancer cells in bone marrow

Abstract

Three different methods, morphologic, immunocytochemic, and fluorescence activated cell sorter (FC) analysis, were compared with respect to their efficiency in detecting breast cancer cells in bone marrow. In the first series of experiments, the three techniques were compared using bone marrow cells artificially mixed with a known amount of breast cancer cells, whereas in a second series bone marrow from breast cancer patients with bone metastases were used. The following results were obtained: When mixtures of the first series were analyzed, FC analysis detected from 1% to 10% of breast cancer cells in bone marrow (0.2% was a border line value), the morphologic method detected from 0.05% to lo%, and the immunocytochemic method, which was clearly superior, detected breast cancer cells in all mixtures (from 0.00025% to 10%). It was noted that, with both the morphologic and immunocytochemic methods, the percentage of breast cancer cells detected was 2 to 360 times higher than the percentage of added cells, and enrichment was inversely proportional to the percentage of added cells. This result could be a result of different separation of cells during centrifugation due to the different density of breast cancer cells. The superiority of the immunocytochemic method was confirmed in the second series of experiments.

The comparative values of bone marrow aspirate and trephine for obtaining bone scan-targeted metastases from hormone-refractory prostate cancer

“…In micrometastases from breast cancer, immunocytochemical methods can detect tumour cells in marrow/tumour mixtures down to 0.00025%. 17 Positive bone marrow aspiration rates using morphology assessment in patients with known bone metastases from breast cancer show a significant proportion of tumour cells in the aspirate (40%). 18 In prostate cancer patients with known M1 disease, positive aspiration rates varied between 20 and 58% when random biopsies were performed in the older literature.…”

The molecular detection of circulating tumour cells

“…Morphology, flow cytometry and conventional cytogenetics have been used to detect circulating tumour cells at a level of 1 in 100, and the more sensitive method of immunocytochemistry may detect one tumour cell in 105 normals (Molino et al, 1991;Osborne et al, 1991). This technique is, however, dependent upon the availability of antibodies to tumour-associated cell-surface antigens and may be subject to false positives when antibodies cross-react or tumour antigens are presented on host immune cells (Heydermann and McCartney, 1985).…”

Göğüs Kanserinde Flow Sitometri ile Tespit Edilenen Kemik İliği Mikrometastazının Kemik, Kemik İliği, ve Akciğer Makrometastazları ile İlişkilidir

“…Another portion of the bone marrow that was not fixed was stained superficially with CD45 and intracellularly with CK18, and then analyzed using flow cytometry 9 . …”