A Novel Workflow to Enrich and Isolate Patient-Matched EpCAM^high and EpCAM^low/negative CTCs Enables the Comparative Characterization of the PIK3CA Status in Metastatic Breast Cancer.

ABSTRACT: Circulating tumor cells (CTCs), potential precursors of most epithelial solid tumors, are mainly enriched by epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM)-dependent technologies. Hence, these approaches may overlook mesenchymal CTCs, considered highly malignant. Our aim was to establish a workflow to enrich and isolate patient-matched EpCAM^high and EpCAM^low/negative CTCs within the same blood samples, and to investigate the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase catalytic subunit alpha (PIK3CA) mutational status within single CTCs. We sequentially processed metastatic breast cancer (MBC) blood samples via CellSearch^® (EpCAM-based) and via Parsortix™ (size-based) systems. After enrichment, cells captured in Parsortix™ cassettes were stained in situ for nuclei, cytokerati

SUBMITTER: Lampignano R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5618534 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature