Circulating Tumor Cells Detection In Nonmetastatic Breast Cancer Patients With Cellsearch System

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of CTC detection with CellSearchSystem and establish the cutoff value of nonmetastatic breast cancer,explore the regularity of CTC variation resulted from surgery andchemotherapy, discover the promising clinical application of CTC detectionin treatment evaluation and early prediction of prognosis in nonmetastaticbreast cancer patients.Methods:81treatment-naive nonmetastatic breast cancer patientswere enrolled.8~10mL peripheral blood was drawn for CTC detection withCellSearch System at baseline(TB), pre-operation(TPr) andpost-operation(TPo) respectively. CTC level was analyzed with patientportraits. Compared CTC values of the preoperative and postoperative, aswell as for neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Get survival data by a median25.9months follow up to testify the predictive prognostic value of CTC.Results: At least one or more CTC were identified in38.3%(31/81)nonmetastatic breast cancer patients, slightly more than analogousresearches. No significant association was found between CTC present and clinical patient characteristics. CTC positive rate obviouslydecreased(p=0.027) after4cycles of neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Noregular pattern of CTC variation was observed between pre-operation andpost-operation. Results from Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and Log-ranktest didn’t show statistic differences in2-year DFS and OS between CTCpositive and CTC negative group.Conclusions: CellSearch technique is an effective method for CTCdetection in nonmetastatic breast cancer. No special clinical or pathologicalmarker can predict CTC present. Long-term follow up and more, largeclinical researches needed to clarify whether CTC detection is promising intherapy evaluation and could CTC to be a prognostic factor innonmetastatic breast cancer.