ABSTRACT.
Aim : to evaluated the presence and clinical relevance of a cluster of
differentiation (CD)326+subset of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in
blood samples of hepatocellular carcinoma patients with portal vein
tumor thrombus and without portal vein tumor thrombosis , who had
undergone curative or palliative intervention, in order to find a novel
prognostic factor for patient management and follow-up.
Method: In total, 47 HCC patients, along with 21 with PVTT and 26
without PVTT were included. The easily transferable methodology of
flow cytometry, along with multiparametric antibody staining were used
to selectively evaluate CD326+CTCs in the peripheral blood samples of
HCC patients. The multiparametric selection allowed any enrichment
methods to be avoided thus rendering the whole procedure suitable for
clinical routine.
Result: The presence of CD326+ cells was strongly correlated with poor
survival and high metastasis rates in this novel patient population .as well
as PVTT probability for CD 326 > or < 0.45 was 88.0%. Several factors
independently correlated with CD326 using univariate multiple logistic
regression of CD 326 with laboratory parameters Correlation was found
between EPCAM activity and AST, ALT, AFP at P Value less than 0.01
In conclusion: CD326+ CTCs are an independent prognostic factor for
tumor aggressiveness rate in multivariate analysis, suggesting that their
evaluation could be an additional factor for liver cancer progression risk
evaluation in patient management