Uncovers biomarkers and
uses circulating tumor cells and circulating tumor - free DNA to predict responses to treatment
Not exact matches
Chicago, GenomeWeb — A new study by researchers from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center has demonstrated the predictive power of an AR - V7 protein expression test
using Epic Sciences» non-EPCAM-based
circulating tumor cell detection platform, which could help guide treatment decisions for men with metastatic castration - resistant prostate cancer.
Currently marketed for research
use by Biofluidica, the test's microfluidic channels
use specific cancer antibodies to detect capture
circulating tumor cells.
«There was this initial thought that [
circulating tumor cells] are only present at late stage,» says Sollier - Christen, but she notes that in the past year, several studies
using more sensitive techniques have found such
cells much earlier in
tumor development, even before the
tumor becomes visible by conventional imaging techniques.
«Despite the identification of
circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and
cell - free DNA (cfDNA) as biomarkers capable of providing clinically relevant information in cancer patients, at present their identification is not routinely
used in clinical practice,» explains Silvia Morbelli, MD, PhD, of the IRCCS San Martino — IST National Cancer Research Institute and University of Genoa in Genoa, Italy.
In a study presented in the featured clinical investigation article of the November issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine, they
used 18F - fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) PET / CT imaging to show that the amount of
cell - free
tumor DNA
circulating in the bloodstream correlates with
tumor metabolism (linked to cancer aggressiveness), not
tumor burden (amount of cancer in the body).
The results were published in the journal Lab on a Chip (Lab on a Chip 17 (19), 3291 - 3299) in an article called: «Magnetic particles assisted capture and release of rare
circulating tumor cells using wavy - herringbone structured microfluidic devices.»
«It could be
used to check the effectiveness of treatment, by identifying the amount of
tumor cells circulating.
In a study
using mice, the researchers found that
using Dox and TRAIL in the pseudo-platelet drug delivery system was significantly more effective against large
tumors and
circulating tumor cells than
using Dox and TRAIL in a nano - gel delivery system without the platelet membrane.
Circulating tumor DNA is a term
used to describe the tiny pieces of genetic material that dying cancer
cells shed into the blood circulation.
The scientists
used a highly innovative
cell separation technology Parsortix ™, developed by UK company ANGLE plc that is able to capture the
circulating tumor cells.
Berkeley researchers isolated
circulating tumor cells from the blood of breast cancer patients, then
used microscale physics to design a precision test for protein biomarkers, which are indicators of cancer.
The findings, published in Gastroenterology, suggest that
circulating pancreas
cells (CPCs) seed the bloodstream before
tumors can be detected
using current clinical tests such as CT and MRI scans.
The technique, described in Biomaterials,
uses gold nanoparticles and Raman scattering, a technology previously developed by Qian and Nie for cancer
cell detection (2007 Nature Biotech paper, 2011 Cancer Research paper on
circulating tumor cells).
DENVER — Three manuscripts published in the recent issue of the Journal of Thoracic Oncology, the official journal of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC), explored the versatility of liquid biopsies by identifying EGFR mutations
using circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in urine and plasma and examining
circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in plasma to predict the risk of lung cancer recurrence after surgical resection.