TITLE:
MUC2 mRNA detection in peripheral blood and bone marrow of breast cancer patients reveals micrometastasis
AUTHORS:
Negar Khazan, Ardeshir Ghavamzadeh, Anna S. Boyajyan, Gohar M. Mkrtchyan, Kamran Alimoghaddam, Seyed H. Ghaffari
KEYWORDS:
Circulating Tumor Cells; Breast Cancer; MUC2; Real-Time PCR; Micrometastasis
JOURNAL NAME:
Natural Science,
Vol.5 No.1,
January
15,
2013
ABSTRACT: Tumor
dissemination to distant organ is the main cause of death. Therefore there is urgent need to set up sensitive methods
for early detection of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and disseminated tumor
cells (DTCs) in peripheral blood (PB) and bone marrow (BM) specimens of breast
cancer patients. We aim to detect MUC2 mRNA positive cells in PB and BM of
breast cancer patients; to relate this to patient relapse. In this study to detect MUC2 mRNA positive cells (tumor marker), PB and BM samples were collected from 50 breast cancer patients after
operation and before adjuvant therapy with 20 PB from healthy individuals as
negative controls. Chi-square test was used to analyze data. MUC2 mRNA by using
Real-time PCR was detected in 9 (18%) of PB and in 10 (20%) of BM samples and
none of the healthy individuals. The relapse rate among MUC2-positive patients
was significance in BM (P