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Circulating Tumor Cells in Men Treated for Prostate Cancer

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Circulating Tumor Cells

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

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Abstract

Despite the advancements in prostate cancer treatments, a significant proportion of men with higher risk features (approximately 25-50%) ultimately experience treatment failure. This highlights the urgent need for improved prognostic and predictive biomarkers capable of identifying patients with localized prostate cancer at risk of developing metastasis. One of the established surrogate markers for metastatic disease is circulating tumor cells (CTCs). This chapter discusses the challenges associated with clinical assessment of prostate cancer risk and describes the available CTCs detection methods along with strategies to overcome the limitations of the CTCs analysis. Additionally, it presents a pilot study that examines the response of CTCs to radiotherapy. In conclusion, patients with clinically localized prostate cancer typically have very low levels of CTCs in the circulation. Overcoming the technical challenges in using CTCs as a liquid biopsy to assess risk or monitor therapy in this patient population remains an active area of research.

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Acknowledgments

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health under Award Numbers P30CA240139 and U01CA239141. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, FL, USA

    Sandra M. Gaston, Wensi Tao, Wendi Ma, Anis Ahmad, Mohammad Alhusseini, Benjamin Spieler, Matthew C. Abramowitz, Alan Dal Pra, Alan Pollack & Radka Stoyanova

  2. Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, FL, USA

    Sandra M. Gaston, Wensi Tao, Anis Ahmad, Benjamin Spieler, Matthew C. Abramowitz, Alan Dal Pra, Alan Pollack & Radka Stoyanova

  3. Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, FL, USA

    Yu-Ping Yang

  4. Department of Urology, Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, FL, USA

    Sanoj Punnen

  5. Desai Sethi Urology Institute, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, FL, USA

    Sanoj Punnen

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  1. Sandra M. Gaston
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  2. Yu-Ping Yang
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Correspondence to Sandra M. Gaston .

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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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Gaston, S.M. et al. (2023). Circulating Tumor Cells in Men Treated for Prostate 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_22

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