Over the last decade, liquid biopsy has gained much attention as a powerful tool in personalized medicine, since it enables monitoring cancer evolution and follow-up of cancer patients in real time. ...Through minimally invasive procedures, liquid biopsy provides important information through the analysis of Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs), and circulating tumor-derived material like circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), circulating miRNAs (cfmiRNAs) and extracellular vehicles (EVs). CTCs and ctDNA analysis has already an important impact on the prognosis, detection of minimal residual disease (MRD), treatment selection and monitoring of cancer patients, while recent data show also its potential for early cancer diagnosis (Figure 1). Numerous clinical trials include now a liquid biopsy arm, and functional studies mainly based on CTC derived cell-lines and CTC derived explants (CDx) provide important insight on the metastatic process. The recent findings in the field of liquid biopsy and the benefits and main clinical applications of CTC and ctDNA analysis in solid tumors are summarized in this review.
Monocarboxylate transporter 4 (
can influence the amount of lactate in the tumor microenvironment and further control cancer cell proliferation, migration, and angiogenesis. We investigated for the ...first time the expression of
in circulating tumor cells (CTCs) derived from early stage Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer patients (NSCLC) and whether this is associated with clinical outcome.
A highly sensitive RT-qPCR assay for quantification of
transcripts was developed and validated and applied to study
expression in CTC isolated through the Parsortix size-dependent microfluidic device from 53 and 9 peripheral blood (PB) samples of NSCLC patients at baseline (pre-surgery) and at relapse, respectively, as well as the "background noise" was evaluated using peripheral blood samples from 10 healthy donors (HD) in exactly the same way as patients.
was differentially expressed between HD and NSCLC patients. Overexpression of
was detected in 14/53 (26.4%) and 3/9 (33.3%) patients at baseline and at progression disease (PD), respectively. The expression levels of
was found to increase in CTCs at the time of relapse. Kaplan-Meier analysis showed that the overexpression of
was significantly (
= 0.045) associated with progression-free survival (median: 12.5 months, range 5-31 months).
overexpression was observed at a high frequency in CTCs from early NSCLC patients supporting its role in metastatic process.
investigated as clinically relevant tumor biomarker characterizing tumor aggressiveness and its potential value as target for cancer therapy. We are totally convinced that
overexpression in CTCs merits further evaluation as a non-invasive circulating tumor biomarker in a large and well-defined cohort of patients with NSCLC.
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