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. 2014 Apr 15;5(7):1753-60.
doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.1524.

Apoptotic circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the peripheral blood of metastatic colorectal cancer patients are associated with liver metastasis but not CTCs

Joshua E Allen  1 , Bikramajit Singh Saroya, Miriam Kunkel, David T Dicker, Avisnata Das, Kristi L Peters, Jamal Joudeh, Junjia Zhu, Wafik S El-Deiry
Affiliations

Apoptotic circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the peripheral blood of metastatic colorectal cancer patients are associated with liver metastasis but not CTCs

Joshua E Allen et al. Oncotarget. .

Abstract

Enumeration of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) by the CellSearch system provides prognostic information in metastatic colorectal cancer, regardless of metastatic site. We found that CTCs generally represent <1% of observed events with CellSearch analysis and adapted scoring criteria to classify other peripheral blood events. Examination of twenty two metastatic colorectal cancer patients' blood revealed that patients with high CEA or liver metastases, but not lung or distant lymph node metastases, possessed significant numbers of apoptotic CTCs prior to treatment initiation by Fischer's exact test. Six out of eleven patients with liver metastasis possessed apoptotic CTCs whereas one of nine patients with other metastases had measurable apoptotic CTCs. An elevated CTC number was not necessarily associated with apoptotic CTCs or CTC debris by Spearman's correlation, suggesting the metastatic site rather than CTCs per se as contributing to the origin of these events.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Exemplary images of peripheral blood event categories
Figure 2
Figure 2. Correlation of peripheral blood events with CEA metastatic colorectal cancer patients before treatment initiation
Peripheral blood event correlations before cycle 1 of treatment. CEA is categorized as follows: 1: <2.5 ng/mL, 2: 2.5-5 ng/mL, 3: 5-50 ng/mL, 4: 50-200 ng/mL, 5: >200 ng/mL.
Figure 3
Figure 3. Correlation of peripheral blood events with sites of metastasis in metastatic colorectal cancer patients before treatment initiation
Peripheral blood event correlations before cycle 1 of treatment.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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