Detection of survivin-expressing circulating cancer cells in the peripheral blood of patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma and its clinical significance

Abstract

We previously demonstrated that the detection of circulating cancer cells (CCC) expressing survivin mRNA could provide valuable information for predicting recurrence in patients with breast, lung, gastric and colorectal carcinoma. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the detection of survivin-expressing CCC in the peripheral blood is also useful for predicting recurrence in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). Blood samples obtained from 108 ESCC patients and 75 healthy volunteers were quantitatively investigated by a technique that detected reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction products based on a hybridization-enzyme linked immunosorbent essay. Not all of the patients were available for the follow-up study. Only 48 patients who were treated with similar adjuvant therapy regimens were available and followed-up for 33 months after the initial assay test. Survivin-expressing CCC were detected in 51 (47.2%) patients. The presence of survivin-expressing CCC was found to be significantly associated with depth of invasion, vascular invasion, nodal status, and disease stages (P = 0.032, 0.019, 0.018, and 0.001, respectively). During the follow-up period, patients who had positive survivin expressions had a higher relapse rate and a shorter survival time than those who had negative survivin expressions (P = 0.002 and 0.016, respectively). Examination of survivin-expressing CCC could provide valuable information in the prediction of haematogenous recurrence as well as in the prognosis of ESCC.

Significant prognostic value of circulating tumor cells in esophageal cancer patients: A meta-analysis

“…There left 32 full-text articles for detailed evaluation, of which 19 studies were further excluded for being incompatible with inclusion criteria [11–15], without survival data to estimate HRs and 95% CIs [1, 16–24, 32] or with less than 20 samples [25–27] (Supplementary Table 1). Finally, 13 eligible studies were included for meta-analysis [9, 10, 28–31, 33–39]. …”

“…In recent years, studies of peripheral blood CTCs suggest that CTCs can be used to predict the progress and prognosis of esophageal cancer [9, 10]. However, current research findings on esophageal CTCs are based on small cohorts of tumor specimen and results are inconsistent.…”

Organ-Specific Markers in Circulating Tumor Cell Screening: An Early Indicator of Metastasis-Capable Malignancy

“…The detection of CTCs expressing survivin (an apoptosis inhibitor) by an RT-PCR enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, developed by Yei and colleagues, provided important predictive information for breast cancer metastasis and recurrence [156]. The same team then used this technique to demonstrate that survivin expression in CTCs from patients with gastric cancer, CRC and esophageal squamous cell carcinoma was associated with disease stage, decreased survival and a higher relapse risk [157,158].…”

Survivin mRNA-circulating tumor cells are associated with prostate cancer metastasis

“…Due to its high expression in most human cancers, and its ability to play a key role in promoting cell proliferation, it is considered to be a potentially important therapeutic target [10]. Moreover, several studies have shown the diagnostic value of survivin-expressing CTCs in patients with cancer [11][12][13][14].…”