Active clinical trials for "Neoplastic Cells, Circulating"

Rectal cancer is one of the most common malignant tumors in the world. However, there's also no reliable and sensitive method to monitor diseases and evaluate therapy responses till now. Circulating tumor cells, which could reflect tumor's status correctly and reliably, may be a promising method in this field. This study is to investigate the role of circulating tumor cells in evaluating and predicting the responses of chemoradiotherapy in rectal cancer.

Utilization of circulating-tumor-cell (CTC) and cell free DNA (cfDNA) as novel and noninvasive tests for diagnosis confirmation, therapy selection, and cancer surveillance is a rapidly growing area of interest. In the wake of FDA approval of a liquid biopsy test, it is important for clinicians to acknowledge the obvious clinical utility of liquid biopsy for cancer management throughout the course of the disease.

Prostate cancer screening with PSA is plagued by high rate of unnecessary prostate biopsies, especially in the "gray zone" (4.00ng/ml e 10.99ng/ml). We introduce a new circulating-tumor-cell (CTC) biomarker for detection of prostate cancer in patients in the PSA "gray zone" level, with the clinically verified potential to substantially decrease the number of unnecessary prostate biopsies.

The sarcomas represent 1% of all cancers in adults, 8% in adolescents and young people, and 10% in children. Even though it is a rare cancer, it contributes to a significant loss of years of life in comparison with other types of cancer, due the fact that it affects children and young people. The diagnosis and treatment are difficult, considering the diversity and rarity of this disease. In addition, on average, more than 50% of patients with high-grade sarcoma present tumor relapse and distant recurrence is considered the main cause of death. The presence of Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) in the blood of patients with sarcoma may be an early marker of tumor invasion, because it is known that the CTCs circulate in the blood for months or years before the development of metastases. The CTCs can be used to monitor the response of the tumor to treatment, in order to match time, dose, and type of therapy. Objectives: collect blood from patients with different types of sarcoma (leiomyosarcoma, synovial sarcoma, pleomorphic sarcoma and liposarcoma) in order to isolate and quantify CTCs. The investigators also have an intention to identify genes of resistance to treatment in these cells.

Through the screening of CTCs in patients with suspected liver cancer and liver tumor resection or liver transplantation, the number of CTCs in the blood of liver cancer patients before and after surgery is monitored, and the clinical application significance of CTCs in liver cancer screening and postoperative recurrence monitoring in liver cancer patients is evaluated.

The change of immune profiles and existence of circulating tumor cells following prostate cryotherapy may be correlated with the clinical outcome.

This study investigates the ability of heat shock protein HSP70 to isolate and quantify circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in patients with advanced or metastatic tumors. CTCs will be isolated from peripheral blood before antineoplastic treatment and again after three months. Isolation using HSP70 will be compared with standard CTC isolation by EpCAM. Additionally, imaging parameters of the primary tumor (if available) and metastases will be analysed and correlations between molecular alterations and imaging parameters will be assesed.

Early diagnosis of malignant tumors is pivotal for improving their prognoses. Circulating tumor cells (CTC) in peripheral blood and Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in exhaled breath are newly developed diagnosis method. Due to the low percentage of CTCs in peripheral blood of cancer patients and the surface structure of lymphocytes (especially megakaryocytes) is often confused with tumor cells, CTC has a high false positive and negative rate. In recent years, the detection of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in exhaled breath as a simple and noninvasive method has shown broad application prospects in the diagnosis of various diseases. A series of studies of VOCs diagnosing solid tumors the investigators had conducted in the past decade show that VOCs can not only distinguish different types of tumors, but also can make a distinction between different stages. This study was to compare CTC and VOCs with clinical samples. Predictive models will be built employing discriminant factor analysis (DFA) pattern recognition method. Sensitivity and specificity will be determined using leave-one-out cross-validation or an independent blind test set.

This study aims to analyze the microsatellite instability (MSI) in the circulatory tumor DNA and in the tumor tissue in the patients diagnosed with uterine endometrial cancer. These data will be used for the study of "Cohort Study of Universal Screening for Lynch Syndrome in Chinese Patients of Endometrial Cancer" (NCT03291106, clinicaltrials.gov).

Despite the growing public awareness and recent progress in multimodality therapy to the colorectal cancer (CRC), CRC still ranks high on the list of the most common and deadly cancers in Taiwan. The cause of CRC mortality is due mainly to the occurrence of distant metastasis. Several reports suggested that circulating tumor cells (CTCs) highly associated with metastasis suggesting that targeting CTCs may offer an unprecedented opportunity to prevent the development of metastasis. Early detection and characterization of CTCs is therefore important as a potential strategy to monitor the progression of CRC. The current proposal is focused on detecting CTCs from peripheral blood of CRC patients using Miselect R system. We will monitor the amount of CTCs and correlate with CRC progression and prognosis.