Aethlon Medical Inc (AEMD)

[ANESRI]

Circulating tumour cells in non-metastatic breast cancer: a prospective study

The identification of circulating tumour cells correlate with poor prognosis in metastatic breast cancer, but there are few data describing the importance of circulating tumour cells in patients with non-metastatic disease. Our aim was to establish if circulating tumour cells predicted worse outcome in patients with non-metastatic breast cancer.

Interpretation
The presence of one or more circulating tumour cells predicted early recurrence and decreased overall survival in chemonaive patients with non-metastatic breast cancer. These results suggest that assessment of circulating tumour cells might provide important prognostic information in these patients.

Prof Anthony Lucci MD a , Carolyn S Hall PhD a, Ashutosh K Lodhi MD a, Anirban Bhattacharyya MD a, Amber E Anderson BS a, Lianchun Xiao MS c, Isabelle Bedrosian MD a, Prof Henry M Kuerer MD a, Prof Savitri Krishnamurthy MD b



Funding
Society of Surgical Oncology, Morgan Welch Inflammatory Breast Cancer Program, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and the State of Texas Rare and Aggressive Breast Cancer Research Program.