Active clinical trials for "Neoplastic Cells, Circulating"

This study assesses the number of CTCs before and 4-5 weeks after focal stereotactic radiotherapy, in single or fractionated dose, and correlate with the local and distant brain progression-free survival in patients with metastatic breast cancer.

In 2015-2016, 224,390 cases were newly diagnosed with lung cancer in USA. Of all the cases, 83% are non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Currently, the 5-year survival rate of NSCLC patients is 21%, and more than 25% of early stage NSCLC patients, who have undergone surgical treatment, will have a relapse or progression. Circulating tumor cells (CTCs), which shed from the primary tumor into the vasculature or lymphatics, can be regarded as a new prognostic factors of metastatic process. Thus far, CTCs-detection technologies can be divided into epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM)-based detection methods, e.g., the widely used CellSearch® and Adnatest®,and EpCAM-independent detection methods, e.g., ISET® and ScreenCell®. Herein, the investigators used a newly established approach, i.e., CanPatrolTM to detect CTCs in early stage lung Adenocarcinoma cases. The investigator aim to explore whether CTCs detection prior to surgery can be contributive to the early diagnosis, or may help to predict the prognosis and guide the treatment strategy of early stage lung Adenocarcinoma.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether the quantitative detection of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in patients with Epcam expressing tumors can be used compared to standard qualitative method - cytology both in the cerebrospinal fluid of patients, clinically suspected for leptomeningeal metastases.

Primary Operation in synchronous metastasized invasive breast cancer to evaluate the use of local therapy

This trial is intended to evaluate the value of circulating tumor cells (CTC), in combination with unenhanced (without injection of contrast media) low dose (to limit the effective radiation dose below 1,5 mSv) chest computed tomography (LDCT) in the screening of Lung cancer (LC). LDCT screening was shown to reduce LC mortality in smokers and ex-smokers, older than 55 years, with a history of more than 30 pack-years. LDCT however shows a close to 30% rate of false positive that require repeat follow-up and also invasive investigations, but also false negatives with metastatic LC being discovered between screening rounds. Migration of circulating tumor cells (CTC) is an early event of carcinogenesis and characterizes aggressive cancers. We recently showed that CTC can be detected with the ISET technique in a population at high risk for LC, i.e. COPD patients before LC was detectable on LDCT. The study will focus on patients at very high risk for lung cancer i.e. smokers and ex-smokers suffering Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). The study will enroll 600 participants who will undergo three rounds of screening at one year intervals, each round combining search for CTC on a blood sample and LDCT. Each participant will be followed for at least one year after the last screening round

The proposal aims at determining whether liquid biopsy approaches are valid in the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Step1 will test 3 CTC isolation methods and analyse by flow cytometry the presence of onco-exosomes in the culture media of pancreatic cell lines. Step 2 will examine the diagnostic accuracy of these blood tumor elements for the diagnosis of cancer of patients with PDAC suspicion or recent diagnosis and their value for disease monitoring.

To address the challenges of isolating and analyzing rare cells, this study aims to validate technical diagnostic instrumentation, tests, protocols and analysis to correlate the number of circulating tumor cells present in whole blood for predicting cancer prognosis and treatment efficacy. Investigators propose to enroll and follow cohorts of cancer patients. Blood samples will be collected from these patients at regular intervals as determined by their doctors. The patient's disease progression will be monitored over the lifetime of this study. The specific aims are to isolate, enumerate and analyze the number of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in patient blood using chip-based sorting, filtration and imaging techniques. Investigators will also use this study to optimize diagnostic instrumentation, test protocols and downstream CTC analysis. Investigators may also correlate the results of these tests with the prognosis of the patients as well as any clinical evidence (e.g. from radiological imaging scans). While investigators focus on prognosis in this study, these correlated tests potentially may also be valuable in future studies for early diagnosis and monitoring of cancer.

Pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is the fourth leading cause of cancer mortality in the United States. The high mortality for these tumors is primarily attributed to the late stage in which most patients are diagnosed, leading to a dismal 5-year survival of 6% for all stages of PDAC. Surgical resection offers the best chance for survival, but most patients only present with symptoms after the tumor has metastasized, and as a result are not operative candidates. This creates a need to both identify patients at an earlier stage while their cancer is still resectable, and predict the aggressiveness of the disease in order to better target treatment. In addition, even patients who receive curative surgery are at a high risk of developing recurrence of disease. Thus, there is also a need to detect recurrence early so appropriate treatment can be provided. As several adjuvant chemotherapeutic regimens are now available, it will be important to identify as soon as possible that the cancer has become refractory to a given therapy. This will allow one to progress to second or third line therapy more quickly while the tumor burden is smaller. This purpose of this study is to identify biomarkers in the blood of patients with PDAC and determine how they can change over time in relation to treatment to assess for any correlation with patient outcomes, response to treatment, recurrence of disease and overall survival. This study will be limited to patients who present to the Johns Hopkins Hospital between January 1, 2015 and December 31, 2018 with PDAC. Blood will be drawn from all consenting patients at the time of initial diagnosis and after treatment. Patients will undergo treatment for their cancer based on personal preference, standard guidelines and discussion with medical, radiation, and surgical oncologists. Patients who undergo surgical resection will also have an additional blood sample collected after resection, and patients who undergo chemotherapy and/or radiation will have an additional blood sample draw at the end of this treatment. A patient could have blood collected at multiple intervals, i.e. a pre-treatment sample, sample post-neoadjuvant chemotherapy/radiation, sample post-surgery, and sample post-adjuvant chemotherapy/radiation. In patients, who have undergone curative resection of PDAC blood samples will be collected till they develop clinical recurrence of disease. For the first 2 years following surgery samples will be collected every 3-4 months. Beyond that the investigators will collect samples every 6 months for the next two years. For all patients found to be alive and disease free beyond 4 years after surgery samples will be collected once every year. These patients will be followed to determine disease-free and overall survival. With this study, the investigators aim to assess the potential utility of blood biomarkers over time for pancreatic tumors which will help both with early detection of disease and also recurrence of disease after surgery. Biomarkers identified would have the potential to create a new method for early diagnosis of patients with PDAC, predict overall survival, response to treatment, or risk of metastatic spread, and predict recurrence of disease, all of which has the potential to drastically improve outcomes for this deadly disease.

Purposes are to determine whether various cohorts of bladder cancer patients have detectable tCTC's, determine it tCTC levels vary with the natural history of bladder cancer and to see if tCTC's provide novel information.Study population are various cohorts of patients diangosed with urothelial carcinoma of the bladder.Procedures include a venous blood draw, up to two times, over a 6 month period for collection of tCTC's. Up to 15 mL's of blood will be collected at each blood draw.

Utilizing CellSearch® technology, the ability to both enumerate and reliably and reproducibly characterize circulating tumor cells (CTC) for tumor markers that predict endocrine sensitivity (estrogen receptor [ER] and Bcl-2) and resistance (HER2 and Ki67) has been demonstrated. An algorithm for a CTC-Endocrine Therapy Index (CTC-ETI) has been constructed that can be calculated for each patient using the CTC enumeration and marker results. The primary goal of this study is to determine a CTC-ETI in ER positive, HER2 negative metastatic breast cancer patients before the initiation of a new endocrine therapy for the identification of patients that will progress rapidly.