Quantitative Analysis of Rare Circulating Tumor Cells by Ligand-targeted PCR

• 作 者: GuohuaYang;JuanLv;NingningHan;YinghuiLi;ZhiweiGuo;TaoWang;WeiHe;
• 机 构: Vice President, Research & Development Genosaber Biotech Co.Ltd.China
• 出 处: BITs 3rd Annual World Cancer Congress-2012(2012第五届世界癌症大会)
• 发表日期: 2012年期

　　Quantitative assessment of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) can be valuable for monitoring metastatic diseases.Current analysis of CTCs is mainly based on immunocytochemical staining.The sensitivity and throughput limitations of this method constrain its use because of the low abundance of CTCs in peripheral blood of patients.Here we present a new technique, named ligand-targeted polymerase chain reaction (LT-PCR) for detecting rare CTCs by a conjugate of a high affinity ligand (e.g.peptide, antagonist, antibody, etc.) that specifically binds to a CTC and a detector oligonucleotide that can be amplified via quantitative PCR (qPCR).The number of CTCs can be extrapolated from the results of qPCR, The analytical results indicates that the LT-PCR allows detection of attomoles of surface molecules on tumor cells.Analysis of whole blood samples from donors with benign and malignant lung diseases suggests significant correlation between the total quantity of surface proteins on CTCs with disease status, opening opportunities for non-invasive evaluation of metastatic diseases.