Quantitative Detection of Circulating Tumor Cells in Cutaneous and Ocular Melanoma and Quality Assessment by Real-Time Reverse Transcriptase-Polymerase Chain Reaction

Abstract

Real-time RT-PCR is able to quantitatively define the quality of a sample and provides quantitative data for melanoma markers. Disparities in the results of previous studies may be attributable to undetected differences in sample quality. The prognostic relevance of this assay is currently under evaluation in several prospective randomized trials.