International journal of cancer. Journal international du cancer
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Comparative Study
Development of a membrane array-based multimarker assay for detection of circulating cancer cells in patients with non-small cell lung cancer.
Combination of multiple mRNA markers has been largely investigated for detection of circulating cancer cells. However, current PCR-based methods are relatively expensive and time consuming. The aim of this study was to develop a membrane array-based multimarker assay for detection of circulating cancer cells in nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. ⋯ As a result, the diagnostic membrane array could detect circulating cancer cells in 90 (90%) of 100 NSCLC patients and in 14 (9.5%) of 147 control subjects (including 6 of 100 normal persons, 3 of 20 breast cancer patients, 3 of 15 colorectal cancer patients and 2 of 12 gastric cancer patients). Moreover, the detection rate was significantly correlated with NSCLC patients' metastatic status and overall stage (p = 0.028 and 0.014, respectively). These results suggested that our blood-based membrane array assay for molecular detection of circulating lung cancer cells has great potential for clinical applications.