Clinical Significance of Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) and Survivin on Predicting Prognosis in Thyroid Cancer Patients

Abstract

Background. Clinical significance of circulating tumor cell (CTC) count, mesenchymal CTCs (MCTCs), and survivin in patients with thyroid cancer remains unclear. We evaluated the relationship between the expression of different CTC subtypes or survivin and the prognosis in patients with thyroid cancer. Patients and Methods. This study enrolled 164 patients with thyroid cancer who were diagnosed from January 2013 to September 2020 in our hospital. Among these patients, there were 73 cases with papillary thyroid cancer (PTC), 60 cases with follicular thyroid cancer (FTC), 12 medullary thyroid cancers (MTC), 10 poorly differentiated thyroid cancers (PDTC), 9 anaplastic thyroid cancers, and 10 control patients with nonmalignant thyroid nodules based on their histopathological characteristics. Only 5 milliliters (mL) of peripheral blood from the patients with thyroid cancer and control was used to detect the CTC cell number via CanPatrol capture technique before treatments. We also isolated mononuclear cells (MNC) from the peripheral blood and performed quantity reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) for survivin gene expression among these patients. Results. The overall positive rates of CTC at diagnosis were 56.1%. The relapse and metastasis rates in PTC and FTC patients with more than 6 CTCs and positive MCTCs were significantly higher than those in the patients with 6 or less than 6 CTCs and MCTCs. It was also found that these patients with >6 CTCs and MCTCs had shorter progression-free survival (PFS). Additionally, the survivin level of the patients with thyroid cancer was strongly relative to differentiation grades of thyroid cancers. Conclusions. The detection of more than six of total CTCs and positive MCTCs in the patients with differentiated thyroid cancer is an excellent biomarker for predicting the prognosis of patients. Survivin also is a good biomarker for thyroid cancer differentiation.

The Number of Intraoperative Intestinal Venous Circulating Tumor Cells Is a Prognostic Factor for Colorectal Cancer Patients

“…Successful CTC detection has been achieved for most solid tumor types, and CTC counts are correlated with patient prognosis and with the risk of recurrence or metastasis [6,7]. CTC detection has previously been used to evaluate patients with breast, prostate, thyroid, renal, and colon cancers [8][9][10]. While CTCs have clear relevance to disease status in individual patients, prior work suggests that only 28.6% of CRC patients exhibits a detectable CTC burden (>1 per 7.5 ml of blood) among Chinese and Western populations [11].…”

From Circulating Tumor Cells to Mirna: New Challenges in the Diagnosis and Prognosis of Medullary Thyroid Cancer

“…CTC evaluation has been investigated also in MTC with promising results (Table 1). In 2022, in a cohort of 12 MTC patients out of 164 patients (7.3%), Weng and colleagues [23] evaluated the number of CTCs at diagnosis using the CanPatrol capture technique and found that 58.3% (7/12 MTC patients) were CTC-positive while 5/12 (41.6%) were not. The authors considered a cutoff of six CTCs and found that, in that case, patients had shorter progression-free survival and an increased metastasis rate.…”

Single-Cell Analysis in the Omics Era: Technologies and Applications in Cancer

“…CTCs display both spatial and temporal heterogeneity when compared to the primary tumor. At the single-cell level, CTC omics analysis can be performed in several tumor subtypes [169], including prostate, breast, lung, thyroid and colorectal cancers [170][171][172][173][174][175]. Each isolated CTC can provide crucial information concerning the clinical and therapeutic scenario for any individual patient.…”