K Pantel

..This review focuses on investigations regarding the biology and clinical relevance of circulating tumor cells in breast cancer...

..The aim of the study was to investigate whether serum concentrations of TIMP-1 and CAIX are associated with the detection of CTC in metastatic breast cancer...

..Here we evaluated, for the first time, the feasibility and clinical utility of circulating miRs as biomarkers for the detection and staging of breast cancer...

..The aim of the study was to perform a comparative analysis of LOH (loss of heterozygosity) in primary tumors as well as peripheral blood and bone marrow (BM) of patients with breast cancer (BCa)...

..In addition, understanding tumor 'dormancy' and identifying metastatic stem cells might result in the development of new therapeutic concepts...

..Here we investigated whether the detection of this DNA is related to bone marrow (BM) micrometastasis and tumor recurrence in breast cancer patients...

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..This Review focuses on the clinical relevance of the latest research results on blood-borne cancer micrometastases in patients with cancer...

..Here, we will review the existing tumor cell assays and discuss their current clinical relevance and perspectives for the clinical management of breast cancer patients...

..Here we review the evidence that disseminating tumour cells have a variety of uses for understanding tumour biology and improving cancer treatment...

..In this review, we will therefore discuss the detection, characterisation and clinical relevance of DTC...

..In this review, we will therefore discuss the detection and characterisation of DTC in the light of new therapeutic strategies targeting tumour-associated molecules and signalling pathways...

..Thus, dissemination of tumor cells appears to be an early process associated with a specific molecular signature of the primary tumor...

..For the first time these methods give access to this critical stage of tumor progression and also contribute to the development of new approaches to therapy aimed at preventing manifest metastasis...

..Moreover, molecular analyses of CTCs/DTCs have provided new insights into the biology of metastasis with important implications for the clinical management of cancer patients...

..Taken together, the advancing characterization of disseminated tumour cells opens the avenue for the development of new therapeutic approaches aimed at preventing metastatic relapse...

..This review summarizes the current knowledge of the biological characteristics of micrometastatic cancer cells in bone marrow of breast cancer patients...

..These methods not only can identify this critical stage of tumor progression but also may facilitate the development of therapies to prevent manifest metastasis...

..In contrast, no such correlation was observed for EGFR...

..These data demonstrate, for the first time, the presence of free tumor-specific DNA in blood and BM of PCa patients and suggest a possible relationship to BM micrometastasis...

..Our findings suggests a potential involvement of MAGE-A in tumor progression, with potential implications for active immunotherapy...

..CONCLUSIONS: Lymphatic microinvolvement shows a high incidence in curatively resected EGJ cancer. Spread to mediastinal lymph nodes seems to necessitate lymphadenectomy of the thoracic cavity in either type...

..The addition of immunohistochemical findings to histopathology reports may help to improve risk stratification of patients with pancreatic cancer...

..We here evaluated whether EMMPRIN expression is related to tumor progression in human breast cancer...

..This information might support assessing individual prognosis, stratifying patients at risk to systemic therapies, and monitoring therapeutic efficacy...

..Our review will focus on breast, colon, lung, and prostate cancer as the main tumor entities in Europe and the United States...

..IGF-1R expression can be used as a novel prognostic marker for adenocarcinomas of the esophagus. Cotreatment with IGF-1R and HER2 antibodies might become a valuable and effective treatment option in esophageal adenocarcinoma...

..Our results suggest the presence of a previously not recognized stress resistant DTC population that combines stem/progenitor attributes with an UPR phenotype...

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..TACE-dependent proteolysis is regulated by its inhibitor, tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases 3 (TIMP3). This study analyses the role of TACE and TIMP3 mRNA expression in squamous cell carcinomas of the head and neck (HNSCCs)...

..This review summarizes the current knowledge on the biological characteristics of micrometastatic cancer cells in bone marrow and lymph nodes of cancer patients...

..This study was aimed at detecting and characterizing circulating tumor cells (CTC) before and after neoadjuvant therapy (NT) in the peripheral blood of patients with breast cancer...

..In this article, we summarize the clinical background and the technical aspects of current methods used for the detection and characterization of DTC in BM and CTC in blood, with a special focus on breast cancer...

..This could be a helpful tool in proper selection of patients for adjuvant chemotherapy...

..The predictive accuracy was substantially increased by adding plasma DNA level. However, larger-scale studies are needed to further confirm its clinical impact on prostate cancer detection...

..Whether these hematopoietic and endothelial progenitors develop from a common precursor, the hemangioblast will be studied at the single-cell level...

..g. loss at 9p21) using a multitarget fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) system, as identifying genetic alterations in urine specimens is a promising approach for the noninvasive detection of bladder cancer...

..To explore whether the presence of occult disseminated tumor cells (DTCs) in the bone marrow before neoadjuvant hormone therapy influences the prognosis of patients with organ confined prostate cancer treated by radical prostatectomy...

..Short tandem repeat (STR) polymorphisms in exon 4 of the esophageal cancer-related gene 2 (ECRG2) are a risk marker for esophageal carcinoma. The aim of the present study was to correlate these STRs with clinical outcome...

..Circulating cell-free DNA in the blood of cancer patients harbors tumor-specific aberrations. Here, we investigated whether this DNA might also reflect the presence of circulating tumor cells (CTC)...

..To assess the role of immunohistochemically detectable nodal microinvolvement of patients with "curatively" resected esophageal carcinoma...

..02). Quantitative analysis demonstrates that elevated DNA levels can be detected in blood of patients with colorectal cancer and may be a useful tool in combination with other tumor markers for detection of colorectal cancer...

..To investigate whether a high frequency of allelic imbalance (AI) is associated with clinicopathological variables of patients with prostate cancer...

..The role of sentinel lymph nodes in colorectal cancer remains unclear...

..Our data provide insight into the molecular diversity of the regulation of the TS gene expression. This is the first study that compares multi-variant TS genotypes in different clinical specimens...

..However, plasma DNA may harbor tumor-specific genetic alterations and could therefore be an interesting target for noninvasive examinations of tumor DNA...

..The method described offers an excellent tool for the enrichment of micrometastatic tumour cell clusters; these clusters may represent the initial stage of development from a single disseminated tumour cell towards an overt metastasis...

..Thus, screening for circulating tumor DNA may provide additional diagnostic information...

..This phenotypical change could already be detected in primary tumors and is associated with the aggressive behavior of breast cancer cells in vivo...

..We investigated CXCR4 expression in esophageal cancer specimens and its association with survival, lymph node microinvolvement, and bone marrow micrometastasis...

..A soluble fragment of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) extracellular domain (sEGFR) can be detected in the serum of cancer patients, but the role of sEGFR is still unclear...

..It may have a role in early metastatic spread, as L1 is associated with micrometastases to both the lymph nodes and bone marrow. Thus, L1 should be explored further as a target for adjuvant therapy for micrometastatic disease...

..MS-MLPA detects genetic and epigenetic aberrations of 37 tumor suppressor genes (TSG) in a single reaction and might, therefore, avoid the cumbersome single gene analyses...

..Cytokeratins (CKs) have been recognized for >20 years as structural marker proteins specific for epithelial cells. Recent expression profiling analyses indicate, however, that CK down-regulation may occur in breast cancer...

..Here we investigated whether the hyperdynamic state of the circulation as a consequence of WBH may stimulate dissemination of malignant cells...

..e., cancer patient). In this review, we will summarize the key findings of research on micrometastatic cancer cells and discuss these findings in the context of the concept of tumour dormancy...

..It is still unclear whether the shedding of DTC from the primary tumor is a random process or a selective release driven by a specific genomic pattern...

..These data suggest that LOH analysis may be a substantial help for diagnosing pancreatic masses. An extension of the panel, perhaps in combination with a better selection of markers may further improve this assay...

..006). In conclusion, the majority of cancer patients have viable tumor cells in their bone marrow at primary tumor diagnosis, and the proliferative potential of these cells determines the clinical outcome...

..The present analysis was aimed to elucidate the biological and clinical roles of BRCA1 losses in metastatic spread and tumor progression in PCa patients...

..We compared MVD determination by immunohistology and quantitative real-time PCR and correlated the results with clinical variables...

..Furthermore, molecular characterization of CTCs might contribute to improving targeted and more individualized cancer therapies...

..Our results indicate that uPAR plays an active role in breast cancer metastasis and may therefore be a promising target for new biologic therapies...

..In conclusion, our data show for the first time that not only hypermethylation but also histone deacetylation is responsible for the mechanism underlying MAGE gene silencing...

..Here, we validated the analytic performance of this system for clinical use in patients with metastatic breast cancer...

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..Thus, BM micrometastasis is a selective process with a specific molecular signature of the primary tumor...

..In conclusion, these data show, for the first time, the involvement of methyl-CpG binding domain proteins in the regulation of the MAGE-A genes...

..Hence, DTC from breast cancer patients' bone marrow expressed cytokeratin 5, which further supports our hypothesis...

..Combined, these results indicate that LIM cofactors CLIM and RLIM regulate the biological activity of ERalpha during the development of human breast cancer...

..Our results may assist in defining the suitability of EMMPRIN as therapeutic target and predicting negative side effects...

..This study evaluates the prevalence and prognostic significance of ITC in patients with primary carcinoma of the cervix uteri...

..045). Thus, immunohistochemical evaluation of MMP-9 expression may provide a basis for the preselection of patients to be included in trials investigating specific protease inhibitor therapy after surgical resection of NSCLC...

..Because MAGE antigens can induce autologous cytolytic T lymphocytes in vivo, the determination of individual MAGE expression patterns in cancer patients may furthermore identify candidate vaccine targets for adjuvant immunotherapy...

..Our preliminary results support the new concept that early disseminated cancer cells evolve independently from their primary tumor...

..If the persistence of ITCs after adjuvant therapy confers a similar risk for recurrence, then it would be an indication to consider secondary adjuvant therapy...

..Furthermore, in order to avoid an additional systemic spread of tumour cells intraoperatively, the pulmonary veins should be ligated first during lung cancer surgery...

..The workshop concluded with an overall summary of the challenges and research opportunities associated with this field with recommendations for consideration by the NIH...

..To assess the feasibility of methylation-specific PCR (MSP) for the detection of promoter hypermethylation of the detoxifying glutathione-S-transferase P1 gene (GSTP1) to detect occult prostate cancer cells in lymph nodes (LNs)...

..We assessed the prognostic significance of the presence of micrometastasis in the bone marrow at the time of diagnosis of breast cancer by means of a pooled analysis...

..In conclusion, these data suggest that advanced ovarian endometriosis represents a highly differentiated tissue with minimal or no malignant potential...

..Ep-CAM expression is, however, restricted to a subset of these cells, which may limit the broad applicability of Ep-CAM as target for second-line adjuvant therapy in breast cancer...

..Thus far, the clinical relevance of MAGE-A transcripts as marker for disseminated tumor cells in bone marrow of patients with operable lung cancer without overt metastases is still unclear...

..Except for promising pilot studies, no data are available to support the immediate use of bone marrow evaluation for treatment monitoring in order to enable the prediction of response to adjuvant therapy...

..This study demonstrates the novel finding of tumor-associated epigenetic markers in BM aspirates/blood and their potential role as targets for molecular detection...

..Current research and clinical developments on hematogeneous micrometastasis in breast cancer patients are summarized...

..Massive invasion of bone marrow with melanoma cells is a rare event even in far-advanced metastatic stages and no clear correlation between tumor load and bone marrow infiltration could be established...