Circulating cancer cells

Bone metastasis is one of the most frequent causes of pain in patients with cancer. Bone is a common site for circulating cancer cells to settle and grow, either near or far from the primary tumour site. Metastatic bone disease is not the same as primary bone cancer. 

Chew, E. C., Josephson, R. L. and Wallace, J. (1976). Morphological aspects of the arrest of circulating cancer cells. In Fundamental Aspects of Metastasis (Weiss, L., ed.). Elsevier-North Holland, Amsterdam, p. 121. 

Glaves D. (1983). Correlation between circulating cancer cells and incidence of... 

Yl. Yamaguchi, K., Takagi, Y., Aoki, S., Futamura, M., and Saji, S., Significant detection of circulating cancer cells in the blood by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction during colorectal cancer resection. Ann. Surg. 232, 58-65 (2000). 

Peck, K., Sehr, Y.-P. et al. (1998) Detection and quantitation of circulating cancer cells in the peripheral blood of lung cancer patients. Cancer Res, 58, 2761-2765. 

Evaluation of a panel of tumor markers for molecular detection of circulating cancer cells in women with suspected hreast cancer. ClinCancer Res, 11,15. 

Detection of circulating cancer cells by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction for uroplakin II in peripheral blood of patients with urothelial cancer. Clin Cancer Res, 6, 3166—3171. 

In summary, both Paget and Ewing identified fundamental principles that govern the probability of metastasis at a distant site, which depends on the frequency with which circulating cancer cells are mechanically arrested in an organ as well as the ease with which they are able to colonize it (Weinberg 2007). 

Alteration in lipid metabohsm is associated with several neoplastic diseases. For example, lipid-rich lung carcinomas have been associated with a more aggressive clinical behavior, and CARS microscopy was employed to study cancer cells in excess lipid environments in vivo mouse model and in vitro [41]. CARS microscopy revealed that intracellular lipid accumulation promoted tissue invasion and showed a lipid accumulation in primary, circulating, and metastasized cancer cells. Also in human patients, circulating cancer cells could be discerned, thanks to the higher CARS signal intensity [42]. 

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