Yue Liu, Congying Fan, Haiyan Hu, Yaowen Yang, Shuning Yan, Yuelan Gu, Meng Ding, Pengfei Li, Yanling Wang, Hongyan Wang and Qie Yang
Background and Objective: Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) are associated with the prognosis of many human cancers. This study aimed to investigate the clinical significance of CTCs in patients with Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) patients treated with EGFR-TKI. Materials and Methods: This prospective observational study recruited a total of 120 cases of advanced NSCLC patients who were admitted from January, 2018 to July, 2020. All patients received the first-line treatment of EFFG-TKI treatment of gefitinib 250 mg/day or erlotinib 150 mg/day. Patients with Progressive Disease (PD) after 3 months of treatment were regarded as resistant to the treatment. The levels of CTC were measured before treatment and after 3 months of treatment by the Cell Search system. Cancer-related biomarkers CA125, CEA, CA199 and Ki67 were measured using the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Results: Deceased patients showed a significantly higher ratio of TNM stage IV and more CTCs compared with the survival cases. A high number of CTCs was positively correlated with CA125, CEA, Ki67 and CA199. In all patients, 161 cases (44.11%) showed resistance to EGFR-TKI treatment. After treatment of 3 months, the CTCs levels and serum CA125 levels were remarkably decreased in non-resistant patients. Patients with CTC≥5 and patients with higher expression of CA125 had markedly shorter 1 year survival. Conclusion: Higher CTCs might be associated with poor clinical outcomes and prognosis and higher CTCs and CA125 levels might predict a higher risk for resistance of EGFR-TKI treatment in NSCLC patients.
Yue Liu, Congying Fan, Haiyan Hu, Yaowen Yang, Shuning Yan, Yuelan Gu, Meng Ding, Pengfei Li, Yanling Wang, Hongyan Wang and Qie Yang, 2022. Circulating Tumor Cells as a Risk Factor for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Treated with EGFR-TKI. International Journal of Pharmacology, 18: 199-206.