Quantified postsurgical small cell size CTCs and EpCAM+ circulating tumor stem cells with cytogenetic abnormalities in hepatocellular carcinoma patients determine cancer relapse

Detection of hepatocellular carcinoma circulating tumor cells performed with conventional strategies, is significantly limited due to inherently heterogeneous and dynamic expression of EpCAM, as well as degradation of cytokeratins during epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, which inevitably lead to non-negligible false negative detection of such "uncapturable and invisible" CTCs. A novel SE-iFISH strategy, improved and optimized for detection of HCC-CTCs in this study, was applied to comprehensively detect, phenotypically and karyotypically characterize hepatocellular and cholangiocarcinoma CTCs in patients subjected to surgical resection.

from # All Medicine by Alexandros G. Sfakianakis via Alexandros G.Sfakianakis on Inoreader http://ift.tt/2z4bus9
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