Abstract

Circulating Tumor Cells – Isolation, Characterization and Applications for Diagnosis & Therapies for Breast Cancer

Pravin Potdar, Head, Jaslok Hospital & Research Centre

Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) in the blood stream play a critical role in establishing metastases in breast, lung, colon, prostate & pancreatic cancers. Last few years detection of CTC from circulating blood cells of cancer patients holds great promise in the field of Medicine. These circulating tumor cells (CTCs) can be enriched and detected via different technologies  and thus the clinical value of CTCs have been widely explored as a biomarker for early detection  & therapeutic management of metastatic cancers. This liquid biopsy allows the characterization of specific sub-populations of CTCs and may revolutionize cancer detection and management. Even though CTC detection holds great promise in Medical Sciences, it remains technically very challenging because of very low concentration CTC in blood stream of these patients. A large panel of technologies is based on identification of different properties of CTCs including physical and biological properties that distinguish them from the surrounding normal blood cells. Presently, CTCs are identified as CK+ /CD45- /DAPI⁺ cells. In breast cancer, the CK19 mRNA has been most frequently used in clinical studies. However, many times   CK18, CK19, CK20, MUC1, PSA, and CEA are also expressed at low levels in normal blood and BM cells. Therefore quantitative RT-PCR assays with validated cut-off values are required to overcome this problem. The detection and molecular characterization of CTCs is one of the most active areas of translational cancer research to include CTCs as a potential biomarker for cancer diagnosis and therapies. In near future, CTC characterization will contribute to have specific targeted therapies for cancer patients at a certain therapeutic level and become the hallmark of personalized