Prognostic Relevance of Circulating Tumor Cells in Molecular Subtypes of Breast Cancer.
Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) can be detected in the peripheral blood of breast cancer patients with early and metastatic disease. Recent data suggest that immune pathologic characteristics between the primary tumor, metastatic colonies and CTCs are discordant and that CTCs possess an independent phenotype that is associated with prognosis and treatment efficacy. Large scale gene expression analysis has provided the possibility to stratify breast cancer according to the gene expression fingerprint of primary tumor tissue into five intrinsic molecular subtypes which can be associated with different clinical outcome. As a consequence of the different prognostic power of primary tumors' characteristics and CTCs several groups have started to investigate if CTCs might be disseminated differentially within these breast cancer subtypes. They determined the CTC number in immunohistochemical subtypes to validate if CTCs may provide differential and more specific prognostic information within each subtype. This review provides an overview of the outcome of some recently published data gathered from early and metastatic breast cancer.
Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf ; Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Marienkrankenhaus Hamburg, Hamburg.
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M
Banys-Paluchowski
Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf.
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H
Schneck
Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf.
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C
Blassl
Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf.
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S
Schultz
Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf.
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F
Meier-Stiegen
Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf.
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D
Niederacher
Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf.
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N
Krawczyk
Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf.
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E
Ruckhaeberle
Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf.
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T
Fehm
Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf.
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H
Neubauer
breast cancer; circulating tumor cell; molecular subtype; prognosis