Journal: Journal of Experimental & Clinical Cancer Research : CR
Article Title: Liquid biopsy reveals the immune status and protein profiles linked to CTC burden and clinical outcomes in metastatic breast cancer
doi: 10.1186/s13046-026-03709-3
Figure Lengend Snippet: Clinical characteristics and CTC detection in patients with mBC. A Summary of the patients’ characteristics. Their mean age was 61.55 years (± 13.36) and most patients had HR + /HER2 − (83.3%, n = 50), followed by HR + /HER2 + (8.3%, n = 5), HR − /HER2 + (5.0%, n = 3), and triple-negative HR − /HER2 − cancer (3.3%, n = 2). First-line treatments included hormone therapy combined with CDK4/6 inhibitors, hormone therapy alone, chemotherapy alone, chemotherapy combined with targeted therapy, chemotherapy combined with immunotherapy, and other regimens. B Sankey diagram (left) showing the distribution of metastatic sites in the study cohort. The most frequent sites were bone, liver, lymph nodes and lung, followed by pleura, peritoneum, brain, pancreas, adrenal gland, skin and duodenum. Each line represents an individual patient. Histogram (right) showing the number of metastatic sites per patient. Most patients had one ( n = 26) or two ( n = 23) metastatic sites. C Schematic representation of CTC analysis in the 60 patients with mBC using the CellSearch ® platform: 35 were classified as CTC-positive (≥ 5 CTCs/7.5 mL of blood), and 25 as CTC-negative. Representative images of CTCs identified by CellSearch ® . CTCs were defined as EpCAM + (based on the enrichment step), nucleated (DAPI⁺), cytokeratin-positive (CK⁺/FITC), and CD45⁻ (exclusion marker, APC) cells. Images show merged and individual fluorescence channels for both CTC-positive and CTC-negative samples
Article Snippet: CTCs were identified using the FDA-cleared CellSearch ® system (Menarini Silicon Biosystems, Inc., Bologna, Italy).
Techniques: Marker, Fluorescence
