Pro-metastatic and mesenchymal gene expression signatures characterize circulating tumor cells of neuroblastoma patients with bone marrow metastases and relapse.

ABSTRACT: Existing marker-based methods of minimal residual disease (MRD) determination in neuroblastoma do not effectively enrich for the circulating disease cell population. Given the relative size differential of neuroblastoma tumor cells over normal hematogenous cells, we hypothesized that cell size-based separation could enrich circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from blood samples and disseminated tumor cells (DTCs) from bone marrow aspirates (BMA) of neuroblastoma patients, and that their gene expression profiles could vary dynamically with various disease states over the course of treatment. Using a spiral microfluidic chip, peripheral blood of 17 neuroblastoma patients at 3 serial treatment timepoints (diagnosis, n=17; post-chemotherapy, n=11; and relapse, n=3), and bone marrow samples at diagno

SUBMITTER: Loh AHP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9513238 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature