Estudio del valor pronóstico de las células tumorales circulantes y de la utilidad de su caracterización molecular en pacientes con cáncer colorrectal y cáncer de cabeza y cuello en estadio avanzado

Abstract

Colorectal adenocarcinoma (CRC) and head and neck carcinoma(HNC) are prevalent cancers with poor survival rates. Circulating tumor cells (CTC) constitute a liquid biopsy modality that has been insufficiently studied as a reservoir of molecular information. CellSearch®, an immunoaffinity-based method that uses anti-EpCAM antibodies, is the most widely used CTC detection system to date and the only one approved by the FDA for healthcare use. However, CellSearch® only allows enumeration and not the recovery of CTC for molecular characterization. IsoFlux™ is an immunoaffinity-based CTC enrichment method that also uses anti-EpCAM antibodies. In addition to enumeration, IsoFlux™ permits CTC recovery for molecular analysis, but has only been previously evaluated in a small and heterogeneous series of patients with CRC and has never been tested in patients with HNC. The primary endpoint of this study was to compare the ability to enumerate CTC with CellSearch® and IsoFlux™ in patients with metastatic CRC (mCRC). Secondary endpoints were the evaluation of different methods of mutational analysis in CTC recovered with IsoFlux™ in mCRC and the enumeration and recovery of CTC with IsoFlux™ and their mutational analysis in patients with recurrent/metastatic (R/M) HNC...