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      Circulating tumor cells: approaches to isolation and characterization

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          Abstract

          Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) shed from primary and metastatic cancers are admixed with blood components and are thus rare, making their isolation and characterization a major technological challenge. CTCs hold the key to understanding the biology of metastasis and provide a biomarker to noninvasively measure the evolution of tumor genotypes during treatment and disease progression. Improvements in technologies to yield purer CTC populations amenable to better cellular and molecular characterization will enable a broad range of clinical applications, including early detection of disease and the discovery of biomarkers to predict treatment responses and disease progression.

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          Most cited references91

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          EGF receptor gene mutations are common in lung cancers from "never smokers" and are associated with sensitivity of tumors to gefitinib and erlotinib.

          Somatic mutations in the tyrosine kinase (TK) domain of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) gene are reportedly associated with sensitivity of lung cancers to gefitinib (Iressa), kinase inhibitor. In-frame deletions occur in exon 19, whereas point mutations occur frequently in codon 858 (exon 21). We found from sequencing the EGFR TK domain that 7 of 10 gefitinib-sensitive tumors had similar types of alterations; no mutations were found in eight gefitinib-refractory tumors (P = 0.004). Five of seven tumors sensitive to erlotinib (Tarceva), a related kinase inhibitor for which the clinically relevant target is undocumented, had analogous somatic mutations, as opposed to none of 10 erlotinib-refractory tumors (P = 0.003). Because most mutation-positive tumors were adenocarcinomas from patients who smoked <100 cigarettes in a lifetime ("never smokers"), we screened EGFR exons 2-28 in 15 adenocarcinomas resected from untreated never smokers. Seven tumors had TK domain mutations, in contrast to 4 of 81 non-small cell lung cancers resected from untreated former or current smokers (P = 0.0001). Immunoblotting of lysates from cells transiently transfected with various EGFR constructs demonstrated that, compared to wild-type protein, an exon 19 deletion mutant induced diminished levels of phosphotyrosine, whereas the phosphorylation at tyrosine 1092 of an exon 21 point mutant was inhibited at 10-fold lower concentrations of drug. Collectively, these data show that adenocarcinomas from never smokers comprise a distinct subset of lung cancers, frequently containing mutations within the TK domain of EGFR that are associated with gefitinib and erlotinib sensitivity.
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            Tumor cells circulate in the peripheral blood of all major carcinomas but not in healthy subjects or patients with nonmalignant diseases.

            The purpose of this study was to determine the accuracy, precision, and linearity of the CellSearch system and evaluate the number of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) per 7.5 mL of blood in healthy subjects, patients with nonmalignant diseases, and patients with a variety of metastatic carcinomas. The CellSearch system was used to enumerate CTCs in 7.5 mL of blood. Blood samples spiked with cells from tumor cell lines were used to establish analytical accuracy, reproducibility, and linearity. Prevalence of CTCs was determined in blood from 199 patients with nonmalignant diseases, 964 patients with metastatic carcinomas, and 145 healthy donors. Enumeration of spiked tumor cells was linear over the range of 5 to 1,142 cells, with an average recovery of >/=85% at each spike level. Only 1 of the 344 (0.3%) healthy and nonmalignant disease subjects had >/=2 CTCs per 7.5 mL of blood. In 2,183 blood samples from 964 metastatic carcinoma patients, CTCs ranged from 0 to 23,618 CTCs per 7.5 mL (mean, 60 +/- 693 CTCs per 7.5 mL), and 36% (781 of 2,183) of the specimens had >/=2 CTCs. Detection of >/=2 CTCs occurred at the following rates: 57% (107 of 188) of prostate cancers, 37% (489 of 1,316) of breast cancers, 37% (20 of 53) of ovarian cancers, 30% (99 of 333) of colorectal cancers, 20% (34 of 168) of lung cancers, and 26% (32 of 125) of other cancers. The CellSearch system can be standardized across multiple laboratories and may be used to determine the clinical utility of CTCs. CTCs are extremely rare in healthy subjects and patients with nonmalignant diseases but present in various metastatic carcinomas with a wide range of frequencies.
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              Circulating tumor cells predict survival benefit from treatment in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer.

              A method for enumerating circulating tumor cells (CTC) has received regulatory clearance. The primary objective of this prospective study was to establish the relationship between posttreatment CTC count and overall survival (OS) in castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). Secondary objectives included determining the prognostic utility of CTC measurement before initiating therapy, and the relationship of CTC to prostate-specific antigen (PSA) changes and OS at these and other time points. Blood was drawn from CRPC patients with progressive disease starting a new line of chemotherapy before treatment and monthly thereafter. Patients were stratified into predetermined Favorable or Unfavorable groups ( or =5 CTC/7.5mL). Two hundred thirty-one of 276 enrolled patients (84%) were evaluable. Patients with Unfavorable pretreatment CTC (57%) had shorter OS (median OS, 11.5 versus 21.7 months; Cox hazard ratio, 3.3; P 26 to 9.3 months). CTC are the most accurate and independent predictor of OS in CRPC. These data led to Food and Drug Administration clearance of this assay for the evaluation of CRPC.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                J Cell Biol
                J. Cell Biol
                jcb
                The Journal of Cell Biology
                The Rockefeller University Press
                0021-9525
                1540-8140
                7 February 2011
                : 192
                : 3
                : 373-382
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Howard Hughes Medical Institute , [2 ]Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center , and [3 ]Center for Engineering in Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA 02129
                Author notes
                Correspondence to Daniel A. Haber: dhaber@ 123456partners.org
                Article
                201010021
                10.1083/jcb.201010021
                3101098
                21300848
                137b7d9f-ae18-4072-abc5-2edf99a83a39
                © 2011 Yu et al.

                This article is distributed under the terms of an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike–No Mirror Sites license for the first six months after the publication date (see http://www.rupress.org/terms). After six months it is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, as described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/).

                History
                : 4 October 2010
                : 19 January 2011
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                Cell biology
                Cell biology

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