Cancer transcriptomic profiling from rapidly enriched circulating tumor cells

作者：Gareth Morrison, Alexander Cunha, Nita Jojo, Yucheng Xu, Yili Xu, Eric S. C. Kwok, Peggy S. Robinson, Tanya B. Dorff, David I. Quinn, John D. Carpten, Zarko Manojlovic, Amir Goldkorn · 发表于：International Journal of Cancer · 年份：2020 · DOI：10.1002/ijc.32915 · 被引用次数：12 · 研究领域：Prostate Cancer Treatment and Research、Cancer Genomics and Diagnostics、Cancer Cells and Metastasis

Transcriptomic profiling of metastatic cancer can illuminate mechanisms of progression and lead to new therapies, but standard biopsy is invasive and reflects only a single metastatic site. In contrast, circulating tumor cell (CTC) profiling is noninvasive and repeatable, reflecting the dynamic and systemic nature of advanced disease. To date, transcriptomic profiling of CTCs has not delivered on its full potential, because white blood cells (WBCs) vastly outnumber CTCs. Current profiling strategies either lack cancer sensitivity and specificity or require specialized CTC capture protocols that are not readily scalable to large patient cohorts. Here, we describe a new strategy for rapid CTC enrichment and transcriptomic profiling using commercially available WBC depletion, microfluidic enrichment and RNA sequencing. When applied to blood samples from patients with advanced prostate cancer (PC), transcriptomes from enriched samples cluster with cancer positive controls and previously undetectable prostate-specific transcripts become readily measurable. Gene set enrichment analysis reveals multiple significantly enriched signaling pathways associated with PC, as well as novel pathways that merit further study. This accessible and scalable approach yields cancer-specific transcriptomic data and can be applied repeatedly and noninvasively in large cancer patient cohorts to discover new therapeutic targets in advanced disease.