Integrative Single-Cell Analyses of Circulating Tumor Cells in Metastatic Breast Cancer
Abstract
Breast cancer affects one in eight women in the United States during her lifetime and claims approximately 41,000 lives per year. Many of these deaths are due to metastatic disease. Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is more likely to affect younger people and minority populations and can be more aggressive, making it more difficult to treat and more likely to recur or metastasize. While many types of breast tumors can be treated by hormone therapy or drugs that target common receptors (ER, PR, HER2), TNBC still lacks effective targeted therapeutic options. Metastasis occurs when cells from the primary tumor breakoff, enter the bloodstream and travel through the body to a new location, forming a new tumor. Many times, patients are asked to undergo invasive biopsy procedures for the purpose of monitoring disease progression and determining prognosis and treatment. During the process of metastasis, the circulating tumor cells (CTCs), which have made it to the bloodstream from the original tumors, provide a noninvasive window into the status of the disease progression. CTCs have been directly correlated with disease progression and outcome. Recent advances in single-cell technologies, like single-cell RNA sequencing, offer the opportunity to explore CTCs more fully at the molecular level and revolutionize the way we approach personalized medicine. CTCs are rare and difficult to capture, but this population of tumor cells could offer a unique window of opportunity that enables the monitoring of disease progression in real-time and importantly, in a noninvasive manner. Our research team hopes to use innovative technologies to better understand CTCs, especially those of TNBC. To achieve this goal, we have established a highly reliable and sensitive methodology to identify and isolate CTCs from mouse models of breast cancer. We will utilize the cutting-edge technology, single-cell RNA sequencing, to determine the molecular characteristics of CTCs as well as the tumors that generate them. Establishing this platform will enable liquid biopsy to inform how changes in CTCs affect tumor progression and potential metastasis. More detailed information about the cells that become metastatic tumors will allow more targeted treatment of cancer and improve survival of metastatic TNBC patients. These results will offer enormous opportunities to follow patient disease progression in a noninvasive manner and will contribute to groundbreaking discoveries of novel therapies targeting CTCs, the seeds of metastasis.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jan 04, 2024
- Source ID
- HT94252310753
Entities
People
- Chonghui Cheng
Organizations
- Baylor College of Medicine
- United States Army