Abstract
Breast cancer is the second most common cancer worldwide. Metastasis is the main reason for death in breast cancer, and today, there is a lack of methods to detect and isolate circulating tumor cells (CTCs), mainly due to their heterogeneity and rarity. There are some systems that are designed to detect rare epithelial cancer cells in whole blood based on the most common marker used today, the epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM). It has been shown that aggressive breast cancer metastases are of non-epithelial origin and are therefore not always detected using EpCAM as a marker. In the present study, we used an in vitro-based circulating tumor cell model comprising a collection of six breast cancer cell lines and white blood cell lines. We used digital holographic cytometry (DHC) to characterize and distinguish between the different cell types by area, volume and thickness. Here, we present significant differences in cell size-related parameters observed when comparing white blood cells and breast cancer cells by using DHC. In conclusion, DHC can be a powerful diagnostic tool for the characterization of CTCs in the blood.
Highlights
Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths among women worldwide [1]
We show that cell types lacking CD45 expression have significantly larger cell area, volume and thickness than CD45+
epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM) has been used a diagnostic marker for the detection of carcinoma cells in mesenchymal organs such as the blood, as a diagnostic marker for the detection of carcinoma cells in mesenchymal organs such as the blood, bone marrow or lymph nodes [30]
Summary
Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths among women worldwide [1]. Breast cancer metastasis accounts for the majority of deaths from breast cancer. The detection of metastases at the earliest stage is important for the management and estimation of breast cancer progression [2]. Breast cancer treatments today are based on the absence or presence of the hormone estrogen receptor (ER), the progesterone receptor (PR) and the expression of human epidermal growth factor receptor. A tumor with the absence of all of these three receptors, called triple negative breast cancer, is an aggressive form of breast cancer with a high risk of relapse and metastasis, and is associated with a poor clinical outcome [5,6,7].
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