Purpose: Due to their minimal-invasive yet potentially current character circulating tumor cells (CTC) might be useful as a "liquid biopsy" in solid tumors. However, successful application in metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) has been very limited so far. High plasticity and heterogeneity of CTC morphology challenges currently available enrichment and detection techniques with EpCAM as the usual surface marker being underrepresented in mRCC. We recently described a method that enables us to identify and characterize non-hematopoietic cells in the peripheral blood stream with varying characteristics and define CTC subgroups that distinctly associate to clinical parameters. With this pilot study we wanted to scrutinize feasibility of this approach and its potential usage in clinical studies.
Experimental design: Peripheral blood was drawn from 14 consecutive mRCC patients at the West German Cancer Center and CTC profiles were analyzed by Multi-Parameter Immunofluorescence Microscopy (MPIM). Additionally angiogenesis-related genes were measured by quantitative RT-PCR analysis.
Results: We detected CTC with epithelial, mesenchymal, stem cell-like or mixed-cell characteristics at different time-points during anti-angiogenic therapy. The presence and quantity of N-cadherin-positive or CD133-positive CTC was associated with inferior PFS. There was an inverse correlation between high expression of HIF1A, VEGFA, VEGFR and FGFR and the presence of N-cadherin-positive and CD133-positive CTC.
Conclusions: Patients with mRCC exhibit distinct CTC profiles that may implicate differences in therapeutic outcome. Prospective evaluation of phenotypic and genetic CTC profiling as prognostic and predictive biomarker in mRCC is warranted.
Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01731158 NCT01521715.