Background and objective: The aim of this study is the detection and quantification of circulating tumor cells (CTC) in patients diagnosed with colon cancer and to establish whether they are related to the main clinicopathologic variables for this type of carcinoma.
Patients and method: Twenty-five colon cancer patients and 30 healthy volunteers were analysed. The quantification was performed using the CellSpotter Analyzer (Veridex LLC), that allows immunomagnetic isolation and immunospecific labelling of the cells for their enumeration.
Results: 72% of the colon cancer patients showed CTC and the mean number of cells found was 5 CTC/7.5 ml of peripheral blood. 52% of the samples contained 2 or more cells. Considering 2 cells as the cut-off point, a significant relationship with lactate dehydrogenase was found.
Conclusions: This new technology which allows isolation and quantification of CTC in peripheral blood has proven to be valid for the detection of epithelial cells in colon cancer patients in every tumor stage. The results shown in this work confirm that cytokeratin 8, 18 and 19 are detected in CTC in this tumor type and will allow us to develop a protocol for the study of the relationship of quantification of theses cells and the clinical parameters involved in colon cancer.