Detection of circulating tumor cells in patients with localized and metastatic prostatic carcinoma: clinical implications.

Abstract

An RT-PCR-based assay for PSA mRNA can detect circulating cells in the peripheral blood of patients with prostatic cancer. The frequency of positivity increases with tumor stage. A unique observation was the detection of cells in patients with no measurable PSA on hormonal therapy. This suggests that continued seeding of distant sites may still be occurring in these patients, despite seemingly successful therapy. The relationship between continued seeding, disease progression, and survival will require further study.

Detection of circulating tumor cells in patients with gastrointestinal tract cancer using RT-PCR and its clinical implications

“…About 11 or 14 months after the initial test (in gastric or colorectal cancer, respectively) we performed the followup test and clinically followed up the patients until June, 2000. Our results showed that persistent positive cases were rare (4 of 48, 8.3%) as compared with the overall positive rates (Tables 2 and 5), suggesting that tumor cells shed from the primary site intermittently (Ghossein et al, 1995) or circulate in clumps. This meant that inhomogeneous distribution of tumor cells within the circulation could prevent them from being sampled invariably (Jonas et al, 1996).…”

True

“…Molecular detection of tissue-specific gene expression in peripheral blood is a new diagnostic approach and has been described as a tumour marker in different solid tumours, such as prostate cancer (Moreno et al, 1992), neuroblastoma (Mattano et al, 1992), and breast cancer (Datta et al, 1994). Especially in prostate cancer, detection of circulating tumour cells could be shown to precede the detection of secondary disease by serum markers determined by immunoassays (Ghossein et al, 1995). To date, only three studies have been published, which have explored blood-borne thyroglobulin mRNA as a potential tumour marker in thyroid cancer (Ditkoff et al, 1996;Tallini et al, 1998;Ringel et al, 1998).…”

“…Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) is a highly sensitive technique to detect tissue-specific messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) expression. This approach has already been used to identify micro-metastases of different solid tumours such as prostate cancer (Ghossein et al, 1995) and neuroblastoma (Mattano et al, 1992). RT-PCR is also discussed as a new diagnostic tool with increasing popularity for the clinical monitoring of thyroid cancer patients (Haber, 1998).…”

Reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction for prostate-specific antigen may be a prognostic indicator in breast cancer

“…The suspension was then centrifuged at 12 000 g (4°C) for 15 min. by tumour cells in tissue and blood samples (Ghossein et al, 1995). RT-PCR of keratin 19 (K19) transcripts has been used to detect occult breast cancer in peripheral blood and bone marrow (Datta et al, 1994).…”