RESUMEN
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second most common cause of cancer-related death worldwide. Detecting and enumerating circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in patients with colorectal cancer emerged as an important prognostic tool which provides a direct estimate of metastatic potential. Improving the turnaround time and decreasing sample volume is critical for incorporating this liquid biopsy tool into routine practice. The objective of the current study was to validate the clinical feasibility of a self-assembled cell array (SACA) chip, a CTC counting platform with less than 4 h turnaround time, in patients with newly diagnosed colorectal cancers. In total, 179 patients with newly diagnosed colorectal cancers from a single institute were enrolled. Epithelial cell adhesion molecule positive (EpCAM(+)), cluster of differentiation 45 negative (CD45(-)) cells were isolated and enumerated from 2 mL of peripheral vein blood (PB) and inferior mesenteric vein blood (IMV) samples obtained during surgery. We found that the CTC count in PB but not IMV correlates with disease stages. Neoadjuvant chemotherapy did not lead to decreased CTC count in both types of blood samples. With cutoffs of four CTCs per 2 mL of blood, and serum carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) level of 5 ng/mL, patients with non-metastatic disease were more likely to experience recurrence if they had high PB CTC count and high serum CEA concentration (odds ratio, 8.9). Our study demonstrates the feasibility of enumerating CTCs with a SACA chip in patients with colorectal cancer.
RESUMEN
A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of this paper. The error has been fixed in the paper.
RESUMEN
The conventional techniques to detect circulating tumour cells (CTCs) are lengthy and the use of centrifugal forces in this technique may cause cell mortality. As the number of CTCs in patients is quite low, the present study aims towards a gentler diagnostic procedure so as not to lose too many CTCs during the sample preparation process. Hence, a Three-Dimensional Microwell dialysis (3D-µDialysis) chip was designed in this study to perform gentle fluorescence-removal process by using dialysis-type flow processes without centrifuging. This leads to a minimum manual handling of CTCs obtained in our study without any contamination. In addition, a rapid staining process which necessitates only about half the time of conventional techniques (35 minutes instead of 90 minutes) is being illustrated by the employment of dialysis process (by dynamically removing water and waste at once) instead of only static diffusion (by statically removing only waste by diffusion). Staining efficiency of our technique is improved over conventional staining because of the flow rate in 3D-µDialysis staining. Moreover, the staining process has been validated with clinical whole blood samples from three TNM stage IV colon cancer patients. The current technique may be termed as "miniature rapid staining and dialysing system".
