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CTCs in Early Breast Cancer

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Circulating Tumor Cells

Part of the book series: Current Cancer Research ((CUCR))

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Abstract

In the last decades, treatment options for breast cancer patients improved rapidly, leading to a more personalized treatment approach. At the moment, treatment decisions are mainly based on patients’ clinical and histopathological criteria. However, these indicators do not always reflect the prognosis of the patient well leading to possible under- or overtreatment. One possible option to further individualize therapy is the use of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) as a prognostic and predictive marker.

CTCs in primary breast cancer are subject of multiple recent publications. Several working groups detected CTCs in 20–30% of patients with early breast cancer without detection of distant metastasis using the CellSearch® System. During neoadjuvant chemotherapy, a decrease in CTC count as well as changes in CTC phenotype (especially regarding receptor status and mesenchymal/epithelial characteristics) could be demonstrated. Moreover, it was shown that CTC count is a quantitative prognostic marker for overall survival, (distant-) disease-free survival, and locoregional relapse-free interval. Especially CTC detection before treatment was associated with a significantly impaired prognosis of patients and is a marker of occurrence of distant metastases.

Further clinical trials will show whether CTCs can be used as a screening tool or direct treatment target in primary breast cancer.

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Author notes

  1. Tatjana Braun and Angelina Fink contributed equally with all other contributors.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University Hospital Ulm, Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Ulm, Germany

    Tatjana Braun, Angelina Fink, Wolfgang Janni & Brigitte Rack

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  1. Tatjana Braun
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  2. Angelina Fink
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  4. Brigitte Rack
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Correspondence to Brigitte Rack .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pathology and Immunology, Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA

    Richard J. Cote

  2. ACTC Lab, Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Evi Lianidou

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Braun, T., Fink, A., Janni, W., Rack, B. (2023). CTCs in Early Breast Cancer. In: Cote, R.J., Lianidou, E. (eds) Circulating Tumor Cells. Current Cancer Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22903-9_18

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