Prospective Monitoring of Circulating Epithelial Tumor Cells (CETC) Reveals Changes in Gene Expression during Adjuvant Radiotherapy of Breast Cancer Patients.

ABSTRACT: Circulating epithelial tumor cells (CETC) are considered to be responsible for the formation of metastases. Therefore, their importance as prognostic and/or predictive markers in breast cancer is being intensively investigated. Here, the reliability of single cell expression analyses in isolated and collected CETC from whole blood samples of patients with early-stage breast cancer before and after radiotherapy (RT) using the maintrac^® method was investigated. Single-cell expression analyses were performed with qRT-PCR on a panel of selected genes: GAPDH, EpCAM, NANOG, Bcl-2, TLR 4, COX-2, PIK3CA, Her-2/neu, Vimentin, c-Met, Ki-67. In all patients, viable CETC were detected prior to and at the end of radiotherapy. In 7 of the 9 (77.8%) subjects examined, the CETC number at the en

SUBMITTER: Maurer M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8482075 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature