Circulating tumor cells as prognostic biomarkers for recurrence of breast cancer

Sarah Anwar, MDLinx

San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium 2017

San Antonio, Texas, United States | December 05-09, 2017

At the 2018 Best of San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium-New York, Joseph Sparano, MD, professor of medicine and women’s health, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, associate chairman for clinical research, Department of Oncology at Montefiore Medical Center, and associate director for clinical research, Albert Einstein Cancer Center, revisited his team’s findings from ECOG-ACRIN trial, which were originally presented at the Symposium in San Antonio.

Dr. Sparano’s research explored the association between circulating tumor cells and late recurrence in early stage breast cancer. This trial enrolled a subset of patients who were previously enrolled in the E5103 trial, “which was a high-risk population that included patients with a node-positive disease, or high-risk node-negative disease,” between 4.5 and 7.5 years after initial diagnosis of HER2- stage II-III breast cancer, with no clinical evidence of recurrence.

The research group aimed to answer 2 main questions: What is the prevalence of CTC-positivity in the patients? Is the presence of CTC in the blood associated with increased risk of recurrence?

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