Diagnostic leukapheresis enables reliable detection of circulating tumor cells of nonmetastatic cancer patients

TLDR

The infrequent detection of circulating tumor cells has limited their clinical utility as liquid biopsies for cancer diagnosis and therapy. The study aimed to determine whether leukapheresis, by sampling large blood volumes, improves CTC detection rates. Leukapheresis was employed to collect and analyze large volumes of blood for CTCs. Leukapheresis enabled reliable, high‑frequency detection of CTCs in nonmetastatic patients, suggesting its potential to support routine clinical use of CTCs as personalized‑medicine biomarkers and to enhance therapy‑response prediction and monitoring.

Abstract

Significance The infrequent detection of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) has hindered their clinical implication and their potential use in the sense of a “liquid biopsy” for cancer diagnosis and therapy. Hypothesizing that the limited blood volume commonly used for CTC analysis (1–10 mL) accounts for variable detection rates, we used leukapheresis to screen large blood volumes for CTCs. This enabled a more reliable detection of CTCs at high frequency even in nonmetastatic cancer patients. Thus, diagnostic leukapheresis may facilitate the routine clinical use of CTCs as biomarkers for personalized medicine. Combined with technologies for single-cell molecular genetics or cell biology, it may significantly improve prediction of therapy response and monitoring, especially in early systemic cancer.