Circulating Tumor Cells Exhibit Metastatic Tropism and Reveal Brain Metastasis Drivers.

ABSTRACT: Hematogenous metastasis is initiated by a subset of circulating tumor cells (CTC) shed from primary or metastatic tumors into the blood circulation. Thus, CTCs provide a unique patient biopsy resource to decipher the cellular subpopulations that initiate metastasis and their molecular properties. However, one crucial question is whether CTCs derived and expanded ex vivo from patients recapitulate human metastatic disease in an animal model. Here, we show that CTC lines established from patients with breast cancer are capable of generating metastases in mice with a pattern recapitulating most major organs from corresponding patients. Genome-wide sequencing analyses of metastatic variants identified semaphorin 4D as a regulator of tumor cell transmigration through the blood-brain barr

SUBMITTER: Klotz R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6954305 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature