Comparative performance of different methods for circulating tumor cell enrichment in metastatic breast cancer patients

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 15; no. 8; p. e0237308
• Main Authors: Drucker, Arik, Teh, Evelyn M., Kostyleva, Ripsik, Rayson, Daniel, Douglas, Susan, Pinto, Devanand M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: San Francisco Public Library of Science 13.08.2020; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Antibodies; Antigens; Biology and Life Sciences; Blood circulation; Breast cancer; Cancer cells; Cancer diagnosis; CD45 antigen; Cell adhesion & migration; Comparative analysis; Councils; Development and progression; Diagnosis; Diagnostic systems; Efficiency; Experiments; Identification and classification; Medicine and Health Sciences; Metastases; Metastasis; Methods; Oncology; Patients; Regulatory approval; Research and Analysis Methods; Sensitivity; Studies; Tumor cells; Tumors; Canada; United States > US; Nova Scotia Canada
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0237308

The isolation and analysis of circulating tumor cells (CTC) has the potential to provide minimally invasive diagnostic, prognostic and predictive information. Widespread clinical implementation of CTC analysis has been hampered by a lack of comparative investigation between different analytic methodologies in clinically relevant settings. The objective of this study was to evaluate four different CTC isolation techniques-those that rely on surface antigen expression (EpCAM or CD45 using DynaBeads.sup.® or EasySep[TM] systems) or the biophysical properties (RosetteSep[TM] or ScreenCell.sup.®) of CTCs. These were evaluated using cultured cells in order to calculate isolation efficiency at various levels including; inter-assay and inter-operator variability, protocol complexity and turn-around time. All four techniques were adequate at levels above 100 cells/mL which is commonly used for the evaluation of new isolation techniques. Only the RosetteSep[TM] and ScreenCell.sup.® techniques were found to provide adequate sensitivity at a level of 10 cells/mL. These techniques were then applied to the isolation and analysis of circulating tumor cells blood drawn from metastatic breast cancer patients where CTCs were detected in 54% (15/28) of MBC patients using the RosetteSep[TM] and 75% (6/8) with ScreenCell.sup.® . Overall, the ScreenCell.sup.® method had better sensitivity.