Cytokeratin 20 mRNA in peripheral venous blood of colorectal carcinoma patients

Abstract

Summary A highly sensitive system was previously developed by us to detect the presence of colorectal carcinoma cells in blood in the form of cytokeratin 20 (CK20) mRNA. In the present study, we used an improved version of this system to analyse the peripheral blood of 28 patients with colorectal carcinoma, five patients with non-cancerous intestinal diseases and six normal controls for the presence or absence of CK20 mRNA and to investigate the relationship between the mRNA results and prognosis. All eight patients with recurrence were positive for CK20 mRNA, as were four patients in the Dukes' C stage with either distant metastasis or dissemination. Five of the nine patients in the Dukes' C stage with neither distant metastasis nor dissemination were positive, and three of these developed recurrence within 11 months after the analysis. Only one of the seven patients in the Dukes' A or B stage was positive, and none showed recurrence during the 1-19 months of observation. None of the five patients without carcinomas or of the six normal controls was positive. Although the follow-up period is limited and the recurrences were all local at present, these results suggest that the presence of CK20 mRNA in circulation may be a useful indicator for the screening of advanced colorectal carcinoma patients with a high risk of recurrence.

Detection of micrometastasis by cytokeratin 20 RT-PCR is limited due to stable background transcription in granulocytes

“…In the originally investigated stabilized lysates from bone marrow of CID patients (n = 14) and peripheral blood of HD (n = 33) we had encountered positive results in 35% and 24% respectively. This represents a markedly lower diagnostic specificity than has been previously reported for CK20 detection by RT-PCR (Burchill et al, 1995;Soeth et al, 1997;Funaki et al, 1998). To verify these results we investigated the interference of mRNA from nucleated blood cells on the CK20 RT-PCR specificity in a panel of peripheral blood samples from ICU patients with non-malignant conditions (Table 1).…”

“…In a number of clinical CK20 RT-PCR studies, comparable diagnostic specificities have been achieved for conventional (Burchill et al, 1995), nested RT-PCR (Soeth et al, 1996) and even double-nested RT-PCR (Funaki et al, 1998) systems. Recent studies have assigned clinical significance and prognostic value to the detection of CK20 mRNA-positive cells in bone marrow and peripheral blood samples of breast, gastric, pancreatic and colorectal cancer patients (Soeth et al, 1996(Soeth et al, , 1997Bostick et al, 1998;Weitz et al, 1998).…”

Prognostic significance of circulating tumour cells following surgical resection of colorectal cancers: a systematic review

“…Eight studies were excluded as they reported only on preoperative blood sampling (Bessa et al, 2001;Fujita et al, 2001;Wong et al, 2001;Zhang et al, 2005;Douard et al, 2006;Iinuma et al, 2006;Wang et al, 2006;Friederichs et al, 2007). Nine studies were excluded as they contained data from which outcomes could not be extracted, of which four were excluded as they combined positive results of molecular detection of multiple samples and their effect on prognosis (Hardingham et al, 2000;Guller et al, 2002;Bosch et al, 2003;Koyanagi et al, 2008), and five were excluded as it was impossible to extract the data for outcomes of interest (White and Griffiths, 1976;Funaki et al, 1998;Wyld et al, 1998;Conzelmann et al, 2005;Wang et al, 2007). Five studies were excluded as they were reviews or systematic reviews, which did not report on prognostic outcomes (Tsavellas et al, 2001;Sleijfer et al, 2007;Riethdorf et al, 2008;Sergeant et al, 2008;Tsouma et al, 2008).…”

Evaluation of MUC1, CK20, and hTERT expression in peripheral blood of gastrointestinal cancer patients in search of diagnostic criteria

“…Funaki et al (1998) detected CK20 mRNA in the peripheral blood of advanced colorectal carcinoma patients, which seems to present an indicator of possible recurrence in individual patients. It has been suggested that CK20 mRNA detection by RT-PCR in the peripheral blood and bone marrow is a promising marker for circulating tumor cells of epithelial origin Johnson et al, 1995;Soeth et al, 1997;Katsumata et al, 2006).…”