Clin Cancer Res: The number of circulating tumor cell subtypes and T cells predicts the prognosticity of patients with metastatic genitourinary tract cancer

Circulatory Tumor Cells (CTC) is being widely studied as a minimally invasive liquid biopsy technology that promises to improve risk stratization in cancer patients and help clinicians develop more appropriate treatment options for patients.
an important feature of CTC is that it allows for digital pathological analysis of individual malignant cell morphology and marker expression.
study compared the CTC characteristics and the relationship between T-cell count and end-of-life in a group of patients with metastatic genitourinary tract (mGU) cancer who received combined immunotherapy.
of CTC assessed in this study include pan-CK/CD45/PD-L1/DAPI, and T-cells include CD4/CD8/Ki-67/DAPI.
analysis is used to compare CTC loads and T-cell counts at different points in time.
effects of CTC load on patient prognostics after baseline and 2nd course of treatment were detected in 183 samples from 81 patients from December 2016 to January 2019.
baseline, CTC was found in 75% of patient samples.
baseline CTC load was associated with a reduction in total lifetime (OS) (p-0.022), but not with treatment.
the effect of special subtype cells on patient prognostics was detected in this study, two of which had unique cellular characteristics during baseline and treatment and were associated with poor OS (0.9-2.3 vs 2-8.2 months; p.lt;0.0001-0.013).
that during treatment, CTC heterogeneity increases, suggesting that OS may become worse (p-0.045).
effect of baseline CD4/CD8 T cell count on patient prognosis during treatment, patients who tested positive for PD-L1 CTC had poor OS after treatment .
cd4/CD8 count during baseline and treatment is also associated with poor OS and remission types.
Overall, for patients with metastatic genitourinary tract cancer, shorter lifetimes may be associated with high CTC counts at baseline, the presence of specific forms of CTC subtypes, PD-L1-positive CTCs, and fewer CD4/8 T cells.
future studies are necessary to further verify the heterogeneity of CTC and the predictive effect of CTC detection in specific forms on prognostication.