PURPOSE Molecular biomarkers in blood are promising for assessment of tumor progression and treatment response. We hypothesized that serial monitoring of circulating tumor cells (CTC) with the use of multimarker quantitative real-time reverse transcriptase-PCR assays could be a surrogate predictor of outcome for melanoma patients enrolled in a multicenter phase II clinical trial of biochemother...

Bacteria are the most abundant and active organisms in marine sediments and are critical for nutrient cycling and as a food source to many benthic and pelagic organisms. Bacteria are found both as free-living cells and as particle-associated cells, which can make investigations of these communities difficult. We found that common procedures for extracting bacteria from sediments leave the bacte...

The presence of circulating tumor cells (CTC) is an independent prognostic factor for progression-free and overall survival for patients with metastatic and newly diagnosed breast cancer. The present study was undertaken to explore whether the presence of CTC before and during follow-up after surgery is associated with recurrence free survival (RFS) and overall survival (OS). In a prospective s...

1 Department of Radiology, University of Wisconsin Medical School, Madison, Wisconsin. 2 Department of Radiology, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, Maryland. 3 Gastroenterology and Digestive Endoscopy Unit, ‘‘Nuovo Regina Margherita’’ Hospital, Rome, Italy. 4 Department of Radiological Sciences, University ‘‘Polo Pontino,’’ Rome, Italy. BACKGROUND. Prior cost-effec...

PURPOSE Elevated levels or increases in circulating tumor cells (CTC) portend poor prognosis in patients with epithelial cancers. Less is known about CTCs as surrogate endpoints or their use for predictive biomarker evaluation. This study investigated the utility of CTC enumeration and characterization using the CellSearch platform, as well as mutation detection in circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA)...

Whilst locoregional control of head and neck cancers (HNCs) has improved over the last four decades, long-term survival has remained largely unchanged. A possible reason for this is that the rate of distant metastasis has not changed. Such disseminated disease is reflected in measurable levels of cancer cells in the blood of HNC patients, referred to as circulating tumour cells (CTCs). Numerous...

The detection and enumeration of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) has shown significant clinical utility with respect to prognosis in breast, colorectal and prostate cancers. Emerging studies show that CTCs can provide pharmacodynamic information to aid therapy decision making. CTCs as a 'virtual and real-time biopsy' have clear potential to facilitate exploration of tumor biology, and in particu...

Every year more than one million new patients are diagnosed with colon cancer worldwide. Although multiple prospective randomized trials and observational studies have demonstrated that mortality from colon cancer can be reduced with screening and removal of adenomatous polyps, compliance with screening guidelines remains low. Recent CT colonography (CTC) trials have shown that CTC is capable o...

nloaded ection of circulating tumor cells (CTC) is advancing as an effective predictor of patient outcome and eutic response. Unfortunately, our knowledge of CTC biology remains limited, and the impact of treatments on CTC metastatic potential is currently unclear. Improved CTC imaging in vivo and is of free-floating tumor cells now show that cytoskeletal regulation in CTCs contrasts starkly wi...

Colon cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related death in the Western world. Approximately 80-90% of colon cancers develop in adenomas after mutations. The risk of encountering malignancy increases with the size of the adenomatous polyp. It is approximately 1% in adenomas <1 cm, and increases to 10% for adenomas 1-2 cm, and 20-53% for adenomas >2 cm. CT colonography (CTC) is a new tec...