Výsledky projektu Molekulární charakterizace cirkulujících nádorových buněk u pacientů s karcinomem ledviny a karcinomy uroteliálního původu v průběhu léčby

The presence of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in patients with solid tumors is associated
with poor prognosis. However, there are limited data concerning the detection of CTCs in renal
cell cancer (RCC). The aim of this study is to evaluate the presence of CTCs in peripheral blood of
patients with RCC undergoing surgery (n = 186). CTCs were tested before and after surgery as well
as during the follow-up period afterwards. In total 495 CTC testing in duplicates were provided.
To enrich CTCs, a size-based separation protocol and tube MetaCell® was used. CTCs presence
was evaluated by single cell cytomorphology based on vital fluorescence microscopy. Additionally,
to standardly applied fluorescence stains, CTCs viability was controlled by mitochondrial activity.
CTCs were detected independently on the sampling order in up to 86.7% of the tested blood samples
in patients undergoing RCC surgery. There is higher probability of CTC detection with growing tumor
size, especially in clear cell renal cell cancer (ccRCC) cases. Similarly, the tumor size corresponds
with metastasis presence and lymph node positivity and CTC detection. This paper describes for
the first-time successful analysis of viable CTCs and their mitochondria as a part of the functional
characterization of CTCs in RCC.