Detection of Circulating Tumour Cells in Urothelial Cancers and Clinical Correlations: Comparison of Two Methods

Abstract

Circulating tumour cells (CTC) are identified exploiting their protein/gene expression patterns or distinct size compared to blood cells. Data on CTC in bladder cancer (BC) are still scarce. We comparatively analyzed CTC enrichment by AdnaTest ProstateCancerSelect (AT) and ScreenCell®Cyto (SC) kits, combined with identification by EPCAM, MUC1, and ERBB2 expression and by cytological criteria, respectively, in 19 nonmetastatic (M0) and 47 metastatic (M+) BC patients, at baseline (T0) and during treatment (T1). At T0, CTC positivity rates by AT were higher in M+ compared to M0 cases (57.4% versus 25%, p = 0.041). EPCAM was detected in 75% of CTC-positive samples by AT, showing increasing expression levels from T0 to T1 (median (interquartile range, IQR): 0.18 (0.07–0.42) versus 0.84 (0.33–1.84), p = 0.005) in M+ cases. Overall, CTC positivity by SC was around 80% regardless of clinical setting and time point of analysis, except for a lower occurrence at T1 in M0 cases. At T0, circulating tumour microemboli were more frequently (25% versus 8%) detected and more numerous in M+ compared to M0 patients. The approach used for CTC detection impacts the outcome of CTC studies. Further investigations are required to clarify the clinical validity of AT and SC in specific BC clinical contexts.

Detection of circulating tumor cells in patients with laryngeal cancer using ScreenCell: Comparative pre- and post-operative analysis and association with prognosis

“…The results of the present study are in accordance with other studies investigating CTCs in solid cancers, including the head and neck, which revealed that the presence of CTCs may influence prognosis (11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(44)(45)(46)(47)(48)(49)(50)(51)(52)(53)(54)(55)(56)(57) similar to what was observed in the patients in the present study (6/8 were positive to CTC preoperatively). A recent meta-analysis comprised of 17 studies confirmed the significant prognostic value of CTCs in patients with head and neck cancer, wherein positive CTCs were significantly associated with poor overall, disease-free and progression-free survival (61).…”

“…The development of semiautomatic technologies, such as the CellSearch system, has allowed evaluation of the prognostic role of CTC status in patients with other types of cancer, such as lung and breast cancer, with promising results (37)(38)(39)(40)(41)(42)(43)(44)(45)(46)(47)(48)(49). A recent study from Chudasama et al (38) evaluated the efficacy of the ScreenCell filtration system, to capture, isolate and propagate CTCs from patients with primary lung cancer.…”

Liquid Biopsies to Select Patients for Perioperative Chemotherapy in Muscle-invasive Bladder Cancer: A Systematic Review

“…Two small studies evaluated CTC mRNA detected by AdnaTest in MIBC patients before NAC or RC [31,32]. AdnaTest first enriches for CTCs using anti-EpCAM, anti-HER2, and anti-EGFR magnetic antibodies, and then investigates mRNA expression for epithelial markers.…”

Analysis of Single Circulating Tumor Cells in Renal Cell Carcinoma Reveals Phenotypic Heterogeneity and Genomic Alterations Related to Progression

“…Samples with ACTB concentration ≥ 3.0 ng/µL were considered good quality. Samples were considered as CTC positive when at least one among EPCAM, MUC1, and ERBB2 markers was higher than the previously defined cut off values, (≥0.40 ng/µL for EPCAM; ≥0.10 ng/µL for MUC1; and ≥0.20 ng/µL for ERBB2 [34]. Samples with all marker concentrations under the cut off values were defined as CTC negative.…”