Active clinical trials for "Neoplastic Cells, Circulating"

The investigators hypothesize that circulating tumor cells (CTC) will be observed in patients with muscle-invasive or metastatic bladder cancer and that CTC will become undetectable, at least transiently, in a fraction of patients after treatment. To investigate this hypothesis, investigators will assess the levels of CTCs both before and after treatment. The feasibility and potential value of fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) in the CTCs will be assessed.

Women with metastatic breast cancer, receiving first line treatment of any kind (chemotherapy, endocrine treatment or treatment with antibodies) will be included in this trial. In connection to treatment, blood samples for determination and enumeration of circulating tumour cells will be collected at different time points. Serum and plasma will be collected and stored for future analysis of RNA and DNA.

The investigators examined circulating tumor cells (CTC) in the perioperative peripheral blood of hundreds of HCC patients undergoing liver cancer surgery using CellSearch technology between 2013 and 2016. Although the investigators have done a preliminary study of the above data and published some results, the previous study was only a basic analysis. Now the investigators plan to carry out further in-depth analysis of these data, including hospitalization data, follow-up results, surgical tumors and blood specimens, and make full use of biostatistics, molecular biology, pathology and other related techniques to elucidate the association between the levels of CTC or CTC clusters and patients' disease during the perioperative period, and to explore the molecular basis of CTC production in hepatocellular carcinoma.

The aim of this study is to quantify the spillage of tumor cells after biopsy in early lung cancer.

The detection and quantification of Circulating tumor cells CTCs in peripheral blood of patients with prostate adenocarcinoma may be useful at least for: Getting a correct stratification of patients with high-risk prostate cancer (PCa). Set the prognosis at baseline. Evaluate the response to different treatments (predictive value and monitoring). Establish individualized therapies.

The purpose of this study is to identify an early indicator of drug efficacy in patients with advanced colorectal cancer - a prospective evaluation of circulating tumor cells, positron-emission tomography scan and RECIST criteria.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether early recurrence after curative resection of ductal pancreatic adenocarcinoma can be explained by either dissemination of cancer cells during intraoperative tumour manipulation, post-operative systemic immune suppression, alteration of biological properties of circulating cancer cells or a combination of these.

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) have prognostic value in several tumor types, and increasing evidence suggests that molecular characterization of CTCs can serve as a "liquid biopsy" to understand and address treatment resistance. The goal of this proposal is to demonstrate that CTCs can be accurately enumerated and characterized in metastatic clear cell renal cancer (CCRC) and can serve as prognostic/predictive biomarkers to improve treatment. The challenge surrounding CTC analysis in CCRC is that most CTC technologies (including the clinical gold-standard CellSearch®) depend in epithelial markers such as EpCAM that are expressed at low or heterogeneous levels in CCRC. Members of the research team have developed a novel CTC microfluidic technology that can effectively detect CTCs that are completely undetectable by CellSearch® because of very low EpCAM expression, as well as allowing for CTC recovery for downstream molecular characterization. The goal of this proposal is therefore to test the hypotheses that (1) The microfluidics CTC technology will have better sensitivity/specificity relative to the CellSearch in metastatic CCRC; and (2) Enumeration of CTCs in metastatic CCRC patients (n=66) will have prognostic value, while molecular characterization of CTCs for expression of biomarkers (VHL, VEGF, mTOR, HIF1/HIF2, AKT) related to CCRC etiology will be predictive of response/resistance to targeted therapies. Although CCRC is relatively uncommon, the lack of established adjuvant treatments and high cost of targeted therapies in the palliative setting makes the search for new prognostic/predictive biomarkers an important clinical goal.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the level of Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) in cancer patients before and after undergoing treatment regimens where the primary treatment modality is radiation therapy (XRT). Specifically, there is interest in the change in CTCs pre- and post- XRT, both in absolute and relative terms.

Background Treatment and control of cancer is associated with high costs, to patients in the form of side effects and discomfort during investigations, to society in the form of expensive drugs and studies. Circulating tumor cells (CTC) has received great attention as a cancer biomarker in trying to estimate future course in patients with breast cancer, colon cancer and prostate cancer. CTC is believed to be a crucial step in cancer spreading to the bloodstream and giving rise to metastases. Detection of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) specifically adds specificity to the analysis of the CTC. The investigators would like to with molecular biological methods predict which patients requires special monitoring and individualized therapy and explore these tests as clinical decision support. Purpose and method In a blood sample from patients with neuro-endocrine tumor (NET) and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the investigators will by cell separation, flow cytometry and DNA sequencing and digital polymerase chain reaction (PCR): Identify and isolate the CTC and investigate these for tumor-specific mutations. Quantify ctDNA and analyze this for specific mutations, which in the past has been found frequent in NET and HCC. Compare findings of mutations on CTC and ctDNA with mutations in tissue biopsies. The results are compared with the clinical data on disease course, including the effect of treatment and survival. Subjects 40 Patients with small intestinal/unknown primary NET before treatment with somatostatin analogues 30 patients with pancreatic NET before treatment with Everolimus 30 patients with presumed radically treated HCC 30 patients with HCC in treatment with Sorafenib A blood sample will be taken prior to the start of treatment, after 1 month after start of treatment and thereafter every 3.-6. month for up to two years. Perspectives In several cancer types molecular diagnostics have had significant influence in treatment and control strategy. The goal is in future to be able to take advantage of a so-called "liquid biopsy" as clinical decision support. The study will bring new knowledge to this growing field of research.