Head and Neck Cancer Circulating Tumour Cells: Pathway to Personalised Medicine
Chamindie Punyadeera,
Associate Professor/Head/Saliva Translational Research Group,
Queensland University of Technology
Metastasis is responsible for 88% of Head and Neck Cancer (HNC) patient deaths within 12 months of diagnosis. Circulating tumour cells (CTCs) provide a window of insight into the metastatic process and are present at low concentrations in the peripheral blood of patients. The isolation, ex-vivo culture and characterization of CTCs may provide an opportunity to non-invasively monitor patient treatment and provide personalized therapeutics.
Commercial technologies have been developed to facilitate the isolation of CTCs from whole blood (CellSearch®: FDA-approved, ScreenCell®: microfiltration, RosetteSep™: CD45 depletion) from 65 patients with advanced stage HNC. Moreover, a Microfluidics Spiral-Chip has been optimised alongside the ClearCell FX to isolate and detect CTCs in bloods from HNC patients.
Single or clustered CTCs that expressed (EGFR+CK-8,-18,-19+and CD45-) were detected in 9/36 (25%) samples using CellSearch®; 13/22 (59%) samples using ScreenCell® and 15/22 (68%) samples using RosetteSep™. The Spiral-Chip has shown to be able to detect tumour cells more readily and deplete the leukocyte population more efficiently.
This study will provide crucial insight into the clinical utility of CTCs in HNC and its use as a liquid biopsy to guide patient treatment. Future directions include further characterization of these patient derived tumour cells and targeted drug sensitivity testing.
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