Detection of Genomically Aberrant Cells within Circulating Tumor Microemboli (CTMs) Isolated from Early-Stage Breast Cancer Patients.

ABSTRACT: Circulating tumor microemboli (CTMs) are clusters of cancer cells detached from solid tumors, whose study can reveal mechanisms underlying metastatization. As they frequently comprise unknown fractions of leukocytes, the analysis of copy number alterations (CNAs) is challenging. To address this, we titrated known numbers of leukocytes into cancer cells (MDA-MB-453 and MDA-MB-36, displaying high and low DNA content, respectively) generating tumor fractions from 0-100%. After low-pass sequencing, ichorCNA was identified as the best algorithm to build a linear mixed regression model for tumor fraction (TF) prediction. We then isolated 53 CTMs from blood samples of six early-stage breast cancer patients and predicted the TF of all clusters. We found that all clusters harbor cancer cells betwee

SUBMITTER: Silvestri M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8003526 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature