Circulating tumour cells as prognosis predictive markers of neoadjuvant chemotherapy-treated breast cancer patients

Abstract

In this study, we detected and measured the count of circulating tumour cells (CTCs) in breast cancer (BC) patients who were treated by neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) in order to assess the clinical validity of CTCs. A total of 96 patients with locally advanced BC and who were treated by NAC were enrolled in this study. The CTC count in the peripheral blood was estimated by negative enrichment-fluorescence in situ hybridization before and after NAC. The clinicopathological data of the patients were recorded. CTCs were detected in 59 of the 96 patients with BC before NAC. Particularly, the detection rate of CTCs was significantly lower in human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER-2)-negative patients than in HER-2-positive patients. CTCs were significantly fewer after NAC than before NAC. The CTC-detection sensitivity in the NAC efficacy evaluation was 75.5% (40/53), while the specificity was 72.1% (31/43). The CTC consistency analysis with clinical effects (Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors Version 1.1 Standard) was described as moderate (kappa = 0.476, P < 0.001). Thus, our findings suggest that CTC detection is a potential new approach to assess the efficacy of NAC.

Keywords:

• Breast cancer;
• circulating tumour cells;
• neoadjuvant chemotherapy;
• negative enrichment;
• fluorescence in situ hybridization;
• HER-2

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2015M580595), Shandong Natural Science Foundation of China (ZR2017LH050 and ZR2019PH084).

Notes on contributors

Zhaoqing Cui

Dr. Zhaoqing Cui, Chief physician and deputy director of Department of Breast and Thyroid Surgery, Liaocheng People's Hospital. His main research field is surgical treatment of breast cancer.

Fengbo Su

Dr. Fengbo Su, Attending physician of Department of Surgery in Shouguang Yingli Central Hospital. His main research interest is precise diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer.

Yang Li

Mr. Yang Li is an assistant researcher in Zhong Yuan Academy of Biological Medicine, Liaocheng People's Hospital. His main research field is in the metabolomics applications in disease biomarker.

Dawei Yang

Dr. Dawei Yang, Associate Professor and deputy director of Zhong Yuan Academy of Biological Medicine, Liaocheng People's Hospital. His main research field has been molecular diagnosis of cancer.