Transcriptome Profiling of Circulating Tumor Cells to Predict Clinical Outcomes in Metastatic Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer

• Published in: International journal of molecular sciences Vol. 24; no. 10; p. 9002
• Main Authors: Groen, Levi, Kloots, Iris, Englert, David, Seto, Kelly, Estafanos, Lana, Smith, Paul, Verhaegh, Gerald W, Mehra, Niven, Schalken, Jack A
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 19.05.2023; MDPI
• Subjects: Androgens; Antimitotic agents; Antineoplastic agents; Biomarkers; Biomarkers, Tumor - metabolism; Biopsy; Cancer; Care and treatment; Castration; castration resistant prostate cancer; circulating tumor cells; Clinical outcomes; Deformability; Enrichment; Enumeration; Gene Expression Profiling; Genes; Heterogeneity; Humans; Leukocytes; Male; Metastases; Metastasis; Mutation; Neoplastic Cells, Circulating - pathology; Patient outcomes; Patients; Pca gene; Phenotypes; Phosphatase; Positive selection; predictive; prognostic; Prostate cancer; Prostatic Neoplasms, Castration-Resistant - pathology; Transcriptomes; transcriptomics; Tumor cells; Tumors; prognostic; prostate cancer; biomarkers; castration resistant prostate cancer; androgen receptor signaling inhibitors; predictive; transcriptomics; circulating tumor cells; chemotherapy; liquid biopsy
• ISSN: 1422-0067; 1661-6596; 1422-0067
• DOI: 10.3390/ijms24109002

The clinical utility of circulating tumor cells (CTC) as a non-invasive multipurpose biomarker is broadly recognized. The earliest methods for enriching CTCs from whole blood rely on antibody-based positive selection. The prognostic utility of CTC enumeration using positive selection with the FDA-approved CellSearch system has been demonstrated in numerous studies. The capture of cells with specific protein phenotypes does not fully represent cancer heterogeneity and therefore does not realize the prognostic potential of CTC liquid biopsies. To avoid this selection bias, CTC enrichment based on size and deformability may provide better fidelity, i.e., facilitate the characterization of CTCs with any phenotype. In this study, the recently FDA-approved Parsortix technology was used to enrich CTCs from prostate cancer (PCa) patients for transcriptome analysis using HyCEAD technology. A tailored PCa gene panel allowed us to stratify metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) patients with clinical outcomes. In addition, our findings suggest that targeted CTC transcriptome profiling may be predictive of therapy response.