Mesenchymal and stemness circulating tumor cells in early breast cancer diagnosis

BMC Cancer

Research Article

Guislaine Barrière¹  Michel Tartary¹  Michel Rigaud¹  Joël Renaudie²  Alain Riouallon² 

[1] Astralab clinical laboratory, 7-11 Avenue de Lattre de Tassigny, 87000, Limoges, France;Department of gynecology and surgery, Clinique du Colombier, 92 avenue Albert Thomas, 87100, Limoges, France;

关键词: Cancer Stem Cell;    Epithelial Mesenchymal Transition;    Circulate Tumor Cell;    Metastatic Breast Cancer Patient;    Primary Breast Cancer Patient;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2407-12-114

 received in 2011-08-02, accepted in 2012-03-23,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundEpithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a crucial event likely involved in dissemination of epithelial cancer cells. This process enables them to acquire migratory/invasive properties, contributing to tumor and metastatic spread. To know if this event is an early one in breast cancer, we developed a clinical trial. The aim of this protocol was to detect circulating tumor cells endowed with mesenchymal and/or stemness characteristics, at the time of initial diagnosis. Breast cancer patients (n = 61), without visceral or bone metastasis were enrolled and analysis of these dedifferentiated circulating tumor cells (ddCTC) was realized.MethodsAdnaGen method was used for enrichment cell selection. Then, ddCTC were characterized by RT-PCR study of the following genes: PI3Kα, Akt-2, Twist1 (EMT markers) and ALDH1, Bmi1 and CD44 (stemness indicators).ResultsAmong the studied primary breast cancer cohort, presence of ddCTC was detected in 39% of cases. This positivity is independant from tumor clinicopathological factors apart from the lymph node status.ConclusionsOur data uniquely demonstrated that in vivo EMT occurs in the primary tumors and is associated with an enhanced ability of tumor cells to intravasate in the early phase of cancer disease. These results suggest that analysis of circulating tumor cells focused on cells showing mesenchymal or stemness characteristics might facilitate assessment of new drugs in clinical trials.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Barrière et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.