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Circulating tumour cells as prognosis predictive markers of neoadjuvant chemotherapy-treated breast cancer patients

Abstract In this study, we detected and measured the count of circulating tumour cells (CTCs) in breast cancer (BC) patients who were treated by neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) in order to assess the clinical validity of CTCs. A total of 96 patients with locally advanced BC and who were treated by NAC were enrolled in this study. The CTC count in the peripheral blood was estimated by negative enrichment-fluorescence in situ hybridization before and after NAC. The clinicopathological data of the patients were recorded. CTCs were detected in 59 of the 96 patients with BC before NAC. Particularly, the detection rate of CTCs was significantly lower in human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER-2)-negative patients than in HER-2-positive patients. CTCs were significantly fewer after NAC than before NAC. The CTC-detection sensitivity in the NAC efficacy evaluation was 75.5% (40/53), while the specificity was 72.1% (31/43). The CTC consistency analysis with clinical effects (Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors Version 1.1 Standard) was described as moderate (kappa = 0.476, P < 0.001). Thus, our findings suggest that CTC detection is a potential new approach to assess the efficacy of NAC.