Prospective study of the relevance of circulating tumor cell status and neoadjuvant chemotherapy effectiveness in early breast cancer

Cancer Medicine

Chao Ni¹  Min Zhang²  Miaochun Zhong³  Yajuan Zheng³  Qingqing Fang³  Jingxia Zhang³  Hongjun Yuan³  Yimin Shen⁴ 

[1] Department of Breast Surgery (Surgical Oncology) The Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine Hangzhou Zhejiang China;Department of Breast Surgery Huzhou Central Hospital Zhejiang University Huzhou Zhejiang China;Department of Breast Surgery Zhejiang Provincial People's Hospital People's Hospital of Hangzhou Medical College Hangzhou Zhejiang China;Department of Endocrinology The Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine Hangzhou Zhejiang China;

关键词: CanPatrol system;    CTCs;    early breast cancer;    neoadjuvant chemotherapy;   

DOI  :  10.1002/cam4.2876

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Abstract Although unequivocal evidence has shown the prognostic relevance of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in patients with metastatic breast cancer (MBC), less evidence is available for its significance in neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NCT) in early breast cancer (BC). Here we conducted an analysis of individual data from 86 patients confirmed as invasive BC by core‐needle biopsy in Zhejiang Provincial People's Hospital between June 2013 and January 2017. The CTCs were assessed at the time after diagnosis and before surgery with the CanPatrol technique. The median follow‐up duration was 46.3 months. CTCs were detected in 37.2% of all patients (29/78) at baseline, and the presence of CTCs was associated with tumor size, tumor stage, and molecular classification. After NCT, the CTC‐positive patients were dropped from 29 to 8, and the EC‐T (epirubicin/cyclophosphamide followed by docetaxel) and TEC (docetaxel/epirubicin/cyclophosphamide) strategies reduce CTC‐positive patients from 16 to 3 and 13 to 5, respectively. The CTC‐negative conversion rates were similar in ER/PR+ HER2+ (5/7, 71.4%), ER/PR− HER2+ (8/11, 72.7%), and TNBC (7/10, 70%) during NCT. In addition, we explored the association between CTC‐negative conversion and objective response rate (partial response and complete response, ORR) and pathological complete response rate (pCR), and our results indicate that ORR was higher in patients with positive CTCs and converted to negative after NCT (ORR, P = .013; pCR, P = .0608). Our study preliminarily highlights the relevance of CTC status and NCT effectiveness in early BC using the CanPatrol system.

【 授权许可】

Unknown