Heterogeneous expression of EPCAM in human circulating tumour cells from patient-derived xenografts

We aim to characterize the heterogeneous circulating tumour cells (CTCs) in peripheral blood, independently of physical or immunological purification, by using patient-derived xenografts (PDXs) models. CTC studies from blood generally rely on enrichment or purification. Conversely, we devised a method for the inclusive study of human cells from blood of PDX models, without pre-selection or enrichment.

A qRT-PCR assay was developed to detect human and cancer-related transcripts from CTCs in PDXs. We quantified the EPCAM and keratins CTC markers, in a PDX cohort of breast cancer. The murine beta actin gene was used for normalization. Spearman's rho coefficients were calculated for correlation.

We demonstrated, for the first time, that we can quantify the content of CTCs and the expression of human CTC markers in PDX blood using human-specific qRT-PCR. Our method holds strong potential for the study of CTC heterogeneity and for the identification of novel CTC markers.

The identification and the relative quantification of the diverse spectrum of CTCs in patients, irrespective of EPCAM or other currently used markers, will have a great impact on personalized medicine: unrestricted CTCs characterization will allow the early detection of metastases in cancer patients and the assessment of personalized therapies.