Abstract 1595: Analysis of circulating epithelial and EMT-like CTCs in pancreatic cancer using a sensitive microfluidic CTC capture device

Abstract

Background & Aims: A critical factor in the poor outcomes in pancreatic cancer is due to it's silent nature until late in the disease process, so early detection has remained a major issue in this type of cancer. Detection, quantification, and molecular characterization of Epithelial circulating tumor cells (CTCs) as well as Epithelial-to-Mesenchymal Transition (EMT)-like CTCs in peripheral blood have been recognized as a means of “liquid biopsy” technique in the diagnosis of cancer and metastasis.

Methods: A modified version of CTC chip, CTC Carpet chip was used to investigate the inextricable relationship between circulating epithelial and EMT-like CTCs in 40 pancreatic cancer patients at both protein and RNA levels.

Results: The recovery from whole blood spiked with different cancer cell line was validated, achieving a mean efficiency of ∼100% for both HT-29 and Panc-1 cell lines compared to <80% for PC-3 cell line. Out of 40 patients, 38 patients had ≥5 CK+ CTCs with a mean of 21.84 per mL and all 40 samples had ≥ 15 Vim+ CTCs with mean of 89.77 per mL of whole blood. Up to 67 CK+ epithelial and 257 Vim+ EMT like CTCs were detected in these set of samples. The results indicated the significant differences between the numbers of Epithelial CTCs vs. EMT-like CTCs in both stage I-II and IV of these 40 pancreatic cancer patients’ samples.

Conclusion: Although the isolation of CTCs from pancretic cancer is possible nowadays, investigation of their clinical utility has proven less successful than the other cancer types, due to poor sensitivity of many CTC assays for patients with PDAC. Herein, we present an integrated microfluidic technology- and biology-based translational approach using bioengineering tools to identify and study the biological relevance of rare CTCs including both circulating epithelial and EMT-like tumor cells simultaneously from the peripheral blood of pancreatic cancer patients by using multiple markers of interest.

Citation Format: Mina Zeinali, Vasudha Murlidhar, Shamileh Fouladdel, Mathius Hafner, Shimeng Shao, Ebrahim Azizi, Max S. Wicha, Kyle Cuneo, Diane M. Simeone, Sunitha Nagrath. Analysis of circulating epithelial and EMT-like CTCs in pancreatic cancer using a sensitive microfluidic CTC capture device. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 106th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2015 Apr 18-22; Philadelphia, PA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2015;75(15 Suppl):Abstract nr 1595. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2015-1595