Real-time quantitative RT-PCR detection of circulating tumor cells from breast cancer patients

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) were recognized as novel tumor biomarker for prognostic and predictive purposes in various cancers. Various detection technologies and devices have been developed to enumerate and characterize CTCs. Most of those approaches are based on the positive enrichment strategy and immunocytological techniques. However, the sensitivity of these approaches proved to be limited in metastatic tumors and the detection of early tumor cell dissemination was problematic. In the present study, we developed a novel CTC detection method by real-time RT-PCR technique in combination of negative enrichment strategy. The developed enrichment approach could recover more than 75% of spiked breast cancer cells from peripheral blood. The detection limit of duplex real-time RT-PCR assay using KRT19 and ERBB2 as targeted genes was consistently one breast tumor cell. Moreover, CTC detection by duplex real-time RT-PCR assay had higher detection sensitivity than that by immunostaining, especially in early breast cancer. In summary, the results of the present study indicated the potential clinical utilities of CTCs identification on breast cancer by duplex real-time RT-PCR in combination with negative enrichment.