circulating tumour cells

BACKGROUND: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the significant global health concerns with an increase in cases. Regular screening tests are crucial for early detection as it is often asymptomatic in the initial stages. Liquid biopsies, a non-invasive approach that examines biomarkers in biofluids, offer a promising future in diagnosing and screening cancer. Circulating-tumour DNA (ctDNA) is the genetic material in biofluids released into the circulatory system by cells. ctDNA is a promising marker for monitoring patients since cancer cells display distinct DNA methylation patterns compared to normal cells...

Oestrogen is considered by many to be a major cause of breast cancer, and yet hormonal contraception and menopausal hormonal therapy have a paradoxically small effect on breast cancer risk. Also, in the oestrogen-only arm of the Women's Health Initiative, subjects given oestrogen had a reduced risk of breast cancer compared to controls. Initiation of breast cancer likely begins early in life, in the long-lived ER- PR- breast stem cell. The main mitogen of ER+ PR+ breast cancers is oestrogen derived from local breast fat and the tumour itself, rather than circulating oestrogens...

Glioblastoma (GBM) as one of the most lethal brain tumours, remains poor therapeutic index due to its typical characters including heterogeneous, severe immune suppression as well as the existence of blood brain barrier (BBB). Immune sonodynamic (ISD) therapy combines noninvasive sonodynamic therapy with immunotherapy, which has great prospects for the combinational treatment of GBM. Herein, we develop macrophage cell membrane cloaked reactive oxygen species (ROS) responsive biomimetic nanoparticles, co-delivering of sonosensitizer Ce6 and JQ1 (a bromo-domain protein 4 (BRD4) inhibitor which can down-regulate PD-L1) and realizing potent GBM ISD therapy...

Novel blood-circulating molecules, as potential biomarkers for glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) diagnosis and monitoring, are attracting particular attention due to limitations of imaging modalities and invasive tissue biopsy procedures. This study aims to assess the diagnostic and prognostic values of circulating cell-free DNA (cfDNA) in relation to inflammatory status in GBM patients and to determine the concentration and average size of DNA fragments typical of tumour-derived DNA fractions. Preoperative plasma samples from 40 patients (GBM 65...

PURPOSE: Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the cause of the majority of cervical cancers and has been showed to be released as cell-free tumour DNA (ctHPV DNA) into the circulation. We here analyse if ctHPV DNA could be used as a prognostic biomarker and/or to detect relapse earlier than traditional methods in locally advanced cervical cancer (LACC). EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: 74 patients with LACC were included, 66/74 were positive for 13 high-risk HPV-types using a bead-based assay on tumour biopsies...

OBJECTIVES: About 17% of patients with human papillomavirus (HPV)-positive head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), which is mainly comprised of oropharyngeal SCC (OPSCC), will experience disease recurrence, which is often considered incurable when manifested at a metastatic and/or recurrent stage. We conducted a critical qualitative systematic review. Our objectives were to provide an overview of the molecular landscape of recurrent/metastatic HPV-positive HNSCC as well as novel molecular biomarkers...

Cell-free DNA (cfDNA) has long been established as a useful diagnostic and prognostic tool in a variety of clinical settings, ranging from infectious to cardiovascular and neoplastic diseases. However, non-neoplastic diseases can act as confounders impacting on the amount of cfDNA shed in bloodstream and on technical feasibility of tumour derived free circulating nucleic acids selecting patients with cancer. Here, we investigated the potential impact of other pathological processes in the clinical stratification of 637 FIT+ patients...

Circulating tumour cells (CTCs) are cancer cells shed from a primary tumour which intravasate into the blood stream and have the potential to extravasate into distant tissues, seeding metastatic lesions. As such, they can offer important insight into cancer progression with their presence generally associated with a poor prognosis. The detection and enumeration of CTCs is, therefore, critical to guiding clinical decisions during treatment and providing information on disease state. CTC isolation has been investigated using a plethora of methodologies, of which immunomagnetic capture and microfluidic size-based filtration are the most impactful to date...

Endometrial cancer, the most common gynaecological cancer worldwide, is closely linked to obesity and metabolic diseases, particularly in younger women. New circulating biomarkers have the potential to improve diagnosis and treatment selections, which could significantly improve outcomes. Our approach focuses on extracellular vesicle (EV) biomarker discovery by directly profiling the proteome of EVs enriched from frozen biobanked endometrial tumours. We analysed nine tissue samples to compare three clinical subgroups-low BMI (Body Mass Index) Endometrioid, high BMI Endometrioid, and Serous (any BMI)-identifying proteins related to histological subtype, BMI, and shared secreted proteins...

BACKGROUND: Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is an aggressive malignancy with a poor survival rate, largely due to the lack of early diagnosis. Although myeloid cells are crucial in the tumour microenvironment, whether their specific subset can be a biomarker of PDAC progression is unclear. METHODS: We analysed IL-22 receptor expression in PDAC and peripheral blood. Additionally, we analysed gene expression profiles of IL-10R2+ /IL-22R1+ myeloid cells and the presence of these cells using single-cell RNA sequencing and murine orthotropic PDAC models, respectively, followed by examining the immunosuppressive function of IL-10R2+ /IL-22R1+ myeloid cells...

Neuropilin-2 (NRP2), a transmembrane non-tyrosine kinase receptor, has been described as a potential critical player in the tumourigenesis of several solid cancers, and particularly in neuroendocrine neoplasms (NEN). A soluble form of NRP2 (sNRP2) has been previously described and corresponds to a truncated splice isoform. Its prognostic value has never been studied in NEN. NRP2 expression was studied by immunochemistry on tissue microarrays (n=437) and on circulating tumour cells (CTC, n=5 patients with neuroendocrine carcinoma, NEC)...

BACKGROUND: Patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) often suffer from cachexia, a wasting syndrome that significantly reduces both quality of life and survival. Although advanced cachexia is associated with inflammatory signalling and elevated muscle catabolism, the early events driving wasting are poorly defined. During periods of nutritional scarcity, the body relies on hepatic ketogenesis to generate ketone bodies, and lipid metabolism via ketogenesis is thought to protect muscle from catabolizing during nutritional scarcity...

Cancers of Unknown Primary (CUP) remains a diagnostic and therapeutic challenge due to biological heterogeneity and poor responses to standard chemotherapy. Predicting tissue-of-origin (TOO) molecularly could help refine this diagnosis, with tissue acquisition barriers mitigated via liquid biopsies. However, TOO liquid biopsies are unexplored in CUP cohorts. Here we describe CUPiD, a machine learning classifier for accurate TOO predictions across 29 tumour classes using circulating cell-free DNA (cfDNA) methylation patterns...

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a significant global health concern. We need ways to detect it early and determine the best treatments. One promising method is liquid biopsy, which uses cancer cells and other components in the blood to help diagnose and treat the disease. Liquid biopsies focus on three key elements: circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), circulating microRNA (miRNA), and circulating tumor cells (CTC). By analyzing these elements, we can identify CRC in its early stages, predict how well a treatment will work, and even spot signs of cancer returning...

Predictive biomarkers of response to immune checkpoint-based therapies (ICI) remain a critically unmet need in the management of advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC). The complex interplay of the tumour microenvironment (TME) and the circulating immune response has proven to be challenging to decipher. MicroRNAs have gained increasing attention for their role in post-transcriptional gene expression regulation, particularly because they can have immunomodulatory properties. We evaluated the presence of immune-specific extracellular vesicle (EV) microRNAs in the plasma of patients with metastatic RCC (mRCC) prior to initiation of ICI...

This systematic review investigates the potential of circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) as a predictive biomarker in the management and prognosis of squamous cell carcinoma of the anal canal (SCCA). PubMed, EMBASE, and Cochrane Central Registry of Controlled Trials were searched until 7 January 2024. Selection criteria included research articles exploring ctDNA in the context of anal cancer treatment response, recurrence risk assessment, and consideration of salvage surgery. A total of eight studies were therefore included in the final review, examining a total of 628 patients...

Gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma (GEA) is one of the principal causes of death related to cancer globally. Human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) is a tyrosine kinase receptor which is found to be overexpressed or amplified in approximately 20% of GEA cases. In GEA, the identification of HER2-positive status is crucial to activate a specific anti-HER2 targeted therapy. The landmark ToGA trial demonstrated the superiority of adding trastuzumab to platinum-based chemotherapy, becoming the first-line standard of treatment...

Current prostate carcinoma (PCa) biomarkers, including total prostate-specific antigen (tPSA), have unsatisfactory diagnostic sensitivity and specificity resulting in overdiagnosis and overtreatment. Previously, we described an optimised bias-based preamplification-digital droplet PCR (OBBPA-ddPCR) technique, which detects tumour DNA in blood-derived cell-free DNA (cfDNA) of cancer patients. The current study investigated the performance of newly developed OBBPA-ddPCR-based biomarkers. Blood plasma samples from healthy individuals ( n = 90, controls) and PCa ( n = 39) and benign prostatic hyperplasia patients (BPH, n = 40) were analysed...

Granzyme B (GrB)-based immunotherapy is of interest for cancer treatment. However, insufficient cellular uptake and a lack of targeting remain challenges to make use of GrB for solid tumour therapy. As GrB induced cell death requires the help of perforin (PFN), we designed a system (nGPM) for the co-delivery of GrB and PFN. Therefore, GrB and PFN were loaded in a porous polymeric nanocapsule rich in acetylcholine analogues and matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2) responsive peptides. The neutrally charged nGPM nanocapsules showed as long circulating time and accumulated at the tumour sites...

BACKGROUND: Circulating plasma cells (CPCs) are defined by the presence of peripheral blood clonal plasma cells, which would contribute to the progression and dissemination of multiple myeloma (MM). An increasing number of studies have demonstrated the predictive potential of CPCs in the past few years. Therefore, there is a growing need for an updated meta-analysis to identify the specific relationship between CPCs and the prognosis of MM based on the current research status. METHODS: The PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Library databases were screened to determine eligible studies from inception to November 5, 2023...