Cancer Management and Research (Oct 2021)

Endoscopic Ultrasound-Guided Acquisition of Portal Venous Circulating Tumor Cells as a Potential Diagnostic and Prognostic Tool for Pancreatic Cancer

  • Zhang Y,
  • Su H,
  • Wang H,
  • Xu C,
  • Zhou S,
  • Zhao J,
  • Shen S,
  • Xu G,
  • Wang L,
  • Zou X,
  • Zhang S,
  • Lv Y

Journal volume & issue
Vol. Volume 13
pp. 7649 – 7661

Abstract

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Yixuan Zhang,1,* Haochen Su,2,* Haibo Wang,3,* Chenghu Xu,1 Siqi Zhou,4 Jing Zhao,1 Shanshan Shen,1 Guifang Xu,1 Lei Wang,1 Xiaoping Zou,1 Shu Zhang,1 Ying Lv1 1Department of Gastroenterology, Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, The Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing University Medical School, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Gastroenterology, Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, Clinical College of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China; 3Cyttelbio Corporation, Beijing, People’s Republic of China; 4Department of Gastroenterology, Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, The Affiliated of Jiangsu University, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Shu Zhang; Ying Lv Email [email protected]; [email protected]: Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) were a promising liquid biopsy for pancreatic cancer (PC) but circulate in low counts in peripheral blood. We evaluated the diagnostic and prognostic values of portal vein (PoV) CTCs in PC patients.Methods: PoV was aspirated under EUS guidance from 40 patients with suspected pancreaticobiliary cancers. Epithelial–mesenchymal-transition-related subtypes of CTCs were identified via immunofluorescence using EpCAM and Twist antibodies. The diagnostic and prognostic performance of PoV CTCs was investigated by receiver-operating characteristic (AUC) curve and Kaplan–Meier survival analysis.Results: In total, 40 patients including 31 with PC, 4 with non-pancreatic periampullary cancer and 5 with benign pancreatic diseases (BPD) were enrolled. CTCs were detected more in PoV compared with peripheral blood. PoV CTC numbers in BPD patients were lower than in PC patients. The number of PoV CTCs, especially mesenchymal-CTCs (M-CTCs), was positively correlated with the tumor burden, instead of epithelial-CTCs (E-CTCs). The combination of PoV CTC numbers and CA19-9 demonstrated better diagnostic efficiency (AUC value 0.987) than either alone in differentiating PC with BPD. Moreover, the diagnostic efficacy of PoV CTCs and M-CTCs were obviously better than that of E-CTCs and CA19-9 in distinguishing early and late stage PC. Lastly, high PoV CTC and M-CTC numbers were both associated with shorter overall survival.Conclusion: Acquisition of the PoV samples in PC patients via EUS-guided procedures has been proved safe and feasible. PoV CTCs, especially M-CTCs, have great potentials in diagnosing and predicting the prognosis of PC, especially in combination with CA19-9.Keywords: circulating tumor cell, endoscopic ultrasound, portal vein blood, diagnosis, prognosis

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