Active clinical trials for "Neoplastic Cells, Circulating"

Several studies conducted over the past decade have shown that Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) can be used as a marker for predicting disease progression and survival in patients with early or metastatic cancer. A high number of CTCs correlate with aggressive disease, increased metastasis and decreased survival rates. Knowledge of metastasis mechanisms was mainly obtained from mouse models with CTCs after orthotopic transplants. The only possibility to study the patient's CTC subpopulations is to carry out ex-vivo expansion and develop an animal model with CTC xenograft. Because circulating blood collection is simple and non-invasive, CTCs can be used as a marker to track disease progression and survival in real time. CTCs could also guide therapeutic choice.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the number of circulating tumor cells (CTC) before and after treatment using an experimental method for detecting CTC, compared to commercial CTC assay results, in patients with prostate, breast or colorectal cancers. Experiments will be done to develop a new assay technique and also test how CTC react to commonly used drugs. This information will be analyzed to determine if the experimental assays can be helpful in the future to predict how a patient's cancer may react to certain treatments. The research experiments will also attempt to grow CTC for long-term or "immortal" cell lines that can be further studied for proteins and gene mutations related to the specific tumor (not familial), and testing for sensitivity to drugs. Blood samples will be collected at specific time points during routine medical care from patients with prostate, breast, colorectal or other solid tumor cancer. Samples will also be collected from patients with no cancer for comparison purposes. Samples for the experimental tests will be identified only by codes and results will not be shared with participants. Patients with prostate, breast or colorectal cancer will also have blood samples drawn for commercial CTC assays as part of their standard care.

Colectomy is the most commonly used therapeutic approach for the treatment of non-metastatic colorectal cancer. This approach is generally very effective however the rate of recurrence and the appearance of metachronous metastasis remains a major problem in the postoperative period. One of the hypothesis that can explain this tumor progression is the dissemination of tumor cells at the time of tumor mobilization. In this work, we wish to verify this hypothesis by comparing two surgical technics used in our department for left or right colectomies: respectively either first section of the mesenteric vessels followed by the mobilization of the tumor or first mobilization of the tumor followed by the section of the mesenteric vessels. To evaluate the dissemination, we will study two disseminations markers that have shown their prognostic value: i) circulating tumor cells (which represent a direct marker of dissemination) and ii) tumor circulating DNA (which is an indirect marker) but has the advantage of being more representative of all tumor clones and therefore the tumor burden released into the blood at the time of surgery).

Circulating microRNA (circ miRNA) and circulating tumor cell (CTC) levels are hypothesized to be associated with response to chemoradiation in patients undergoing treatment for locally advanced esophageal adenocarcinoma. The goal of this project is to assess the use of circulating microRNA (miRNA) and circulating tumour cells (CTC) as biomarkers of cancer and predictive markers for neoadjuvant therapy.

Verify the Coincidence rate between Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and tumor tissue or Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) of advanced NSCLC patients with Driver gene mutation

With an estimated > 2 million women with undetected breast cancer in the United States, the need for improved early detection is imperative. Early diagnosis for these women is key to minimizing quality life-years lost to disease and optimizing success of treatment. Evidence now exists supporting the finding that systemic spread is an early event in the natural history of breast cancer, manifested as a release of single cancer cells from the incident, clinically undetectable tumor, which circulate through the bloodstream and deposit within remote tissues. Reliable and accurate detection of these circulating tumor cells (CTCs) is now possible with a simple peripheral venous blood draw. This study hypothesizes that women with CTCs and no other signs of malignancy have clinically undetectable disease. This study will attempt to validate this technology as a breast cancer screening test and acquire data to determine the clinical validity and utility of this proposed screening methodology on a relatively young, ethnically diverse population who are eligible military health care beneficiaries. Furthermore, this study will attempt to bank identified CTCs in order to perform additional molecular analyses in the future. The specific aims are to develop a simple, reliable, cost-effective, and clinically relevant breast cancer screening test in order to identify subclinical disease early in its natural history in subjects at risk of progression to clinically apparent disease over the ensuing decade. The ultimate goal is to decrease the treatment-related morbidity and cause-specific mortality of breast cancer. An experienced team devoted to the care of patients with breast disease has been assembled to achieve this goal.

Can tumor cells and tumor DNA be sampled from blood samples from prostate cancer patients? Is it possible to understand the causal relationship between the occurrence of the tumor cells and the tumor DNA in the blood by reviewing the patient's medical records, including information about investigations, analytical reports or diagnoses? Can gene defects that may be useful in predicting the best treatment be detected by sequencing individual tumor cells or plasma from blood samples?

This culture system utilizes the special affinity difference of biomedical material coating for different cells to achieve the effect of isolating tumor cells from the blood sample. The coating of the system has the characteristic that to make the WBCs adhesion, but the cancer cells in the blood sample suspend in the culture medium, which achieves the effect of separating cancer cells from the blood. The supernatant with the cancer cells can further be isolated from the cultural system for related analysis and detection to achieve early diagnosis and screening.

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is the 4th highest incidence of cancer and 6th of cancer death of the males in Taiwan. Because the patients were mainly middle-aged male, the disease eventually resulted in a huge loss of labor force, productivity and a huge burden of family supports and medicinal costs. Unfortunately, the incidence and death of HNSCC seemed to be increasing in Taiwan. Currently, the primary treatments of HNSCC are mainly surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy or targeted therapy or concurrent chemoradiotherapy. Immune checkpoint inhibitors become an emerging treatment in recent days. However, how to select adequate patient by using biomarkers remains an unsolved problem. Therefore, investigator have developed a new method for isolation and detection of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in HNSCC patients. Moreover, the expression of immune markers (such as PD-L1, PD-L2, PD-1) on CTCs or immune cells might be a good target to study. Investigator's preliminary data found CTCs and circulating cancer stem-like cells but not PD-1 expression levels on peripheral T cells in patients with recurrence or metastasis HNSCC did not associated with overall survival. Therefore, investigators are wondering if PD-L1 more specific due to it expression on cancer cells. Therefore, in the 3-year project, investigators will utilize developing device and protocol in first year and then enroll 40 freshly diagnosed participants with head and neck cancer at stage III-IV with intent to receive curative concurrent chemo-radiotherapy (CCRT), and then analyze CTCs, PD-L1 expression levels on CTCs. Blood sample will be taken before, during (definition: 3-6 weeks after start RT) and after (definition: 4 +/-2 weeks after complete CCRT) completion of CCRT. Investigators will also enroll 10 health participants and taking blood sample for 3 times and follow up. Further statistical tests with clinical conditions (disease status, treatment effects, progression or distant metastasis and death) will be performed to elucidate their clinical significance. Hopefully, investigators will clarify the correlation between clinical outcomes and expression of PD-L1 on CTCs in head and neck patients. This could be a new biomarker for clinical cancer care.

This culture system utilizes the special affinity difference of biomedical material coating for different cells to achieve the effect of isolating cancer cells from the blood sample. The coating of the system has the characteristic that to make the WBCs adhesion, but the cancer cells in the blood sample suspend in the culture medium, which achieves the effect of separating cancer cells from the blood. The supernatant with the cancer cells can further be isolated from the cultural system for related analysis and detection to achieve early diagnosis and screening.