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Ovarian tumor cell detection in peripheral blood progenitor cells harvests by RT-PCR
Hitoshi Kurata1, Koich Takakuwa, Ikunosuke Tsuneki
1Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Faculty of Medicine, Niigata University, Japan. tounin@med.niigata-u.ac.jp
Background:
To evaluate the frequency of tumor cell contamination in autologous peripheral-blood progenitor cells from patients with ovarian cancer, and to determine the impact of infusing such cells on relapses after high-dose chemotherapy.
Methods:
Seventy-three samples of peripheral-blood progenitor cells from 24 ovarian cancer patients were studied for contaminated tumor cells by cytokeratin 7 and cytokeratin 20 reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction.
Results:
Tumor cell contamination in peripheral-blood progenitor cells was detected in 11 of 24 patients (46%) and, among these, in four of 11 patients who received transplantations of peripheral-blood progenitor cells. There was no trend towards longer relapse-free survival in patients infused with cytokeratin-negative peripheral-blood progenitor cells as compared with positive ones. Interestingly, two of four patients who received transplantations of peripheral-blood progenitor cells containing tumor cells were free from progression at 20 and 41 months after transplantation.
Conclusion:
Tumor cell contamination of peripheral-blood progenitor cells was frequently noted by transcriptase polymerase chain reaction in patients with ovarian cancer. The biological and clinical significance of this finding remains to be elucidated.