Open Access Green as soon as Postprint is submitted to ZB.
Genomic profiling of viable and proliferative micrometastatic cells from early-stage breast cancer patients.
Clin. Cancer Res. 10, 3457-3464 (2004)
Purpose: Metastases in distant organs are the major cause of death for cancer patients, and bone marrow is a prominent homing organ for early disseminated cancer cells. However, it remains still unclear which of these cells evolve into overt metastases. We therefore established a new approach based on the analysis of viable and proliferating cancer cells by single-cell comparative genomic hybridization.
Experimental Design: The bone marrow of early-stage breast tumor patients (pN0M0) was screened for tumor cells by immunostaining. By applying special short-term culturing, we selected for viable and proliferative tumor cells. The short-term culturing allowed us to evaluate the proliferative potential of micrometastatic cells, which we had previously shown to represent an independent prognostic marker. We assessed genomic changes in single disseminated cancer cells by single-cell comparative genomic hybridization.
Results: We found that these viable disseminated cancer cells already had a plethora of copy number changes in their genome. All of these cells showed chromosomal copy number changes with a substantial intercellular heterogeneity and differences to the matching primary tumors.
Conclusions: The established experimental strategy might pave the way for the identification of metastatic stem cells in cancer patients. Our preliminary results support the new concept that early disseminated cancer cells evolve independently from their primary tumor.
Altmetric
Additional Metrics?
Edit extra informations
Login
Publication type
Article: Journal article
Document type
Scientific Article
ISSN (print) / ISBN
1078-0432
e-ISSN
1557-3265
Journal
Clinical Cancer Research
Quellenangaben
Volume: 10,
Issue: 10,
Pages: 3457-3464
Publisher
American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)
Reviewing status
Peer reviewed
Institute(s)
Institute of Human Genetics (IHG)