Expression Profiling of Circulating Tumor Cells: a Prognostic and Predictive Biomarker in Cancer.

We have developed a strategy to predict response to treatment of cancer patients based on expression profiling of circulating tumour cells (CTCs). CTCs are collected from blood using AdnaGen immunomagnetic capture followed by expression profiling with TATAA Biocenter GrandPerformance assays via preamplification. Preliminary results from a pilot study on breast cancer (BC) patients demonstrates excellent sensitivity, technical reproducibility and identifies a set of genes that separates a group of non-responders. The approach shows great promise as liquid biopsy for the motoring of treatments and prediction of responses.