Improving the yield of circulating tumour cells facilitates molecular characterisation and recognition of discordant HER2 amplification in breast cancer. Academic Article uri icon

Overview

abstract

  • BACKGROUND: Circulating tumour cells (CTCs) offer a non-invasive approach to obtain and characterise metastatic tumour cells, but their usefulness has been limited by low CTC yields from conventional isolation methods. METHODS: To improve CTC yields and facilitate their molecular characterisation we compared the Food and Drug Administration-approved CellSearch Epithelial Kit (CEK) to a simplified CTC capture method, CellSearch Profile Kit (CPK), on paired blood samples from patients with metastatic breast (n=75) and lung (n=71) cancer. Molecular markers including Human Epidermal growth factor Receptor 2 (HER2) were evaluated on CTCs by fluorescence in situ hybridisation (FISH) and compared to patients' primary and metastatic cancer. RESULTS: The median cell count from patients with breast cancer using the CPK was 117 vs 4 for CEK (P<0.0001). Lung cancer samples were similar; CPK: 145 cells vs CEK:4 cells (P<0.0001). Recovered CTCs were relatively pure (60-70%) and were evaluable by FISH and immunofluorescence. A total of 10 of 30 (33%) breast cancer patients with HER2-negative primary and metastatic tissue had HER2-amplified CTCs. CONCLUSION: The CPK method provides a high yield of relatively pure CTCs, facilitating their molecular characterisation. Circulating tumour cells obtained using CPK technology demonstrate that significant discordance exists between HER2 amplification of a patient's CTCs and that of the primary and metastatic tumour.

publication date

  • May 11, 2010

Research

keywords

  • Breast Neoplasms
  • Genes, erbB-2
  • Immunomagnetic Separation
  • Neoplastic Cells, Circulating

Identity

PubMed Central ID

  • PMC2869174

Scopus Document Identifier

  • 77952120469

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

  • 10.1038/sj.bjc.6605676

PubMed ID

  • 20461092

Additional Document Info

volume

  • 102

issue

  • 10