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Review
. 2019 Sep 17:2019:1718920.
doi: 10.1155/2019/1718920. eCollection 2019.

EpCAMlow Circulating Tumor Cells: Gold in the Waste

Chiara Nicolazzo  1 , Angela Gradilone  1 , Flavia Loreni  1 , Cristina Raimondi  2 , Paola Gazzaniga  1
Affiliations
Review

EpCAMlow Circulating Tumor Cells: Gold in the Waste

Chiara Nicolazzo et al. Dis Markers. .

Abstract

The CellSearch® system which is still considered the gold standard for the enumeration of circulating tumor cells (CTC) utilizes antibodies against the epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM) for CTC enrichment. Recently, CTC discarded by the CellSearch® system due to their low EpCAM expression have been isolated and analyzed. We here sought to discuss technical and biological issues concerning the isolation and characterization of EpCAMlow CTC, highlighting the enormous potential of this subpopulation discarded by CellSearch®, which might instead reveal an unexpected clinical significance in tumor types where CTC enumeration has never been validated for prognostic and predictive purpose.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this paper.

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