Gilupi Gmbh, Potsdam, Germany, has shared results of a study examining the detection of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the blood of different groups of pulmonary disease patients.1

Yutong He and colleagues from the Fourth Hospital of Hebei Medical University investigated whether combining two methods—low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) and enumeration of CTCs using the Gilupi CellCollector—improves early detection of lung cancer. The CellCollector medical device enables in vivo isolation of CTCs.

To explore the effectiveness of the combined methods, 8,313 volunteers were screened by LDCT: 32 ground-glass nodules (GGNs) and 19 healthy volunteers were randomly selected. Additionally, the study enrolled 15 lung cancer patients. In the selected cohorts, the Gilupi CellCollector was used to detect CTCs.

In the study, about 73% of the lung cancer patients were determined to be CTC-positive. The detection rate of CTCs among GGN patients—a cohort that has a 5% to 10% risk of developing lung cancer in the future—was lower (16%) when compared to the lung cancer group, but higher than in the healthy control group, where no CTCs were detected.

All of the CTCs isolated from GGN patients were analyzed using next-generation sequencing, which identified mutations in three cancer-related genes: KIT, SMARCB1, and TP53.

REFERENCE

  1. He Y, Shi J, Shi G, et al. Using the new CellCollector to capture circulating tumor cells from blood in different groups of pulmonary disease: a cohort study. Sci Rep. 2017;7(1):9542; doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-09284-0.