Immune targets on circulating epithelial cells in early and late breast cancer

The main differences between the MAINTRAC method in comparison to enrichment based methods are the higher counts of EPCAM+ cells and that not mere existence but rise or rail of cell counts are prognostic. It could be shown that these cells have markers of epithelial-mesenchymal transition and stem cell characteristics. So far 2 intriguing observations emerged from our continued exploration of CEC. (1) The cell type with EMI and stem cell characteristics can be found also in non-cancer conditions, e.g. metabolic liver disease. (2) Cell counts disappear in progressing patients or are negative a priori in aggressive subtypes. These findings urged for an extended characterization of CEC. We adapted the MAINTRAC Basic procedure for flowcytometric detection of CEC on the AMNIS FlowSight. The MAINTRAC defined CEC phenomenon shows that cells in EMT are not a rare event. Though not exclusively tumor derived it opens extended possibilities to investigate the biology and targetability of these cells in different disease situations.