Cleveland Clinic Recognizes Circulating Tumor Cell Technology As Top Medical Innovation For 2009
Main Category: Cancer / OncologyAlso Included In: Medical Devices / Diagnostics
Article Date: 16 Nov 2008 - 0:00 PDT
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Veridex, LLC announced today that the technology used in the CellSearch® System to measure circulating tumor cells (CTCs) was ranked as the top medical innovation for 2009 by the Cleveland Clinic, a leading multispecialty academic medical center. The ranking is based on technologies likely to have a significant impact on health care next year.
The prestigious annual recognition follows a rigorous selection process by a panel of Cleveland Clinic physicians. The list was announced today at the Cleveland Clinic's 2008 Innovation Summit.
To view the multimedia news release, go to: http://www.nnpkit.com/veridex/cellsearch/.
"We are deeply gratified by this recognition from the Cleveland Clinic," said Robert McCormack, Ph.D., Vice President of Medical and Scientific Affairs, Veridex. "Our entire team is committed to the research and development of this technology, and our goal with the CellSearch® test is to provide patients and doctors with reliable and timely information about cancer progression."
CellSearch®, a proprietary Veridex technology, is cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to predict progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) in patients with metastatic breast, colorectal or prostate cancer. The test can be used at any time during the course of disease for serial monitoring of patients with these types of cancer. The CellSearch® System is also available as a diagnostic test in Europe.
The CellSearch® System is the first diagnostic test to automate the capture and detection of tumor cells that have detached from solid tumors and entered the patient's blood. With the CellSearch® System, it is possible to reproducibly find a single circulating tumor cell among approximately 40 billion blood cells in a 7.5 mL blood sample.
The ability to identify a single cancer cell through this innovative technology provides physicians with an important measure of a patient's disease prognosis to help them make more informed patient care decisions. Dr. Mark Graham, a practicing oncologist from Waverly Hematology Oncology in Cary, North Carolina, has used CellSearch® for the past two years to regularly monitor the prognosis of his population of metastatic breast cancer patients.
"Knowing a patient's CTC count provides a second measurement, complementary to traditional imaging, to help me assess the prognosis of a patient and gauge her response to current treatment. This allows my team to better advise patients of their current status and make more informed treatment decisions. Many of my patients find that the CellSearch® CTC test allows them to continue their daily activities with the peace of mind that I am closely monitoring their disease and will be able to adjust their treatment in a timely fashion, if necessary," says Dr. Graham.
Dr. Graham adds, "Our general impression is that the CellSearch® test has allowed us to do fewer radiology imaging studies, which can reduce cost, lessen radiation exposure and save valuable time for the patient."
Last year, another Veridex diagnostic test, the GeneSearch™ Breast Lymph Node Assay, was recognized by TIME magazine as one of the top medical breakthroughs of 2007. This assay is a diagnostic test indicated to detect lymph node metastases in breast cancer.
About CellSearch®
The CellSearch® test works by using antibodies that are joined to microscopic iron particles, called ferrofluid. These antibody/ferrofluid combinations attach very specifically to CTCs. Powerful magnets then draw the CTCs out of the blood sample and they are then stained with additional bio-molecules and chemicals so that they can be positively identified as CTCs.
About Veridex, LLC
Veridex, LLC, a Johnson & Johnson company, is an organization dedicated to providing physicians with high-value in vitro diagnostic oncology products. Veridex's products may significantly benefit patients through earlier disease detection and may enable personalized strategies to help improve patient management and outcomes.
Veridex, LLC
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Cancer Is A Stem Cell Issue
posted by Gregory D. Pawelski on 16 Nov 2008 at 2:14 pmResults of using the CellSearch System indicate that monitoring of circulating tumor cells (CTC's) can contribute to the understanding of tumor-blood interactions and may provide a valuable tool for therapy monitoring in solid tumors like breast, colorectal or prostate cancer. With cells being alive in circulation, it may mean that a patient would need additional treatment.
These ciculating tumor cells can detach from solid tumors and enter the blood stream, thus beginning the process of metastasis, the most life-threatening aspect of cancer. To metastasize, or spread cancer to other sites in the body, circulating tumor cells travel through the blood and can take root in another tissue or organ (like the lungs, bones, liver, adrenals and even the brain).
Immunicon's founder/scientist (immunologist) Paul Liberti's Immunicon team developed all the technology to help researchers and oncologists monitor CTC's. Immunicon licensed their technology to Johnson & Johnson who formed a new unit called Veridex to market Immunicon's CellSearch technology. The technology gives the patient and oncology community a great method to monitor treatment.
The CellSearch system can be very complimentary to an array of tools that oncologists should be using to counsel their patients. The technique can be done earlier than other currently approved diagnostic modalities like CT, MRI or PET imaging. CellSearch is basically what is going on with functional profiling, showing what patients are benefiting from what drug agents "before" introducing them into the patient.
Anti-cancer treatments often effectively shrink the size of tumors, but some might have an opposite effect, actually expanding the small population of cancer stem cells believed to drive the disease. Some treatments could be producing more cancer stem cells which are then capable of metastasizing, because these cells are trying to find a way to survive the therapy. The tumor escapes from chemotherapy by induction of stem cell marker expression. The small number of cells that survive the treatment could then generate another tumor that metastasizes.
This may help explain why the expression of stem cell markers has been associated with resistance to chemotherapy and radiation treatments and poor outcome for patients with cancers including prostate, breast and lung cancers. That tells us that understanding how to target these markers and these cells could prove useful in treating these cancers.
Analysis of stem cell expression before and after treatment reveals that even as some anti-cancer treatments shrank tumors, they increased expression of stem cell markers (of which contibute to stem cells' defining ability to renew themselves and differentiate into different cell types). Some treatments are not enough to completely inhibit tumor growth, and the cancer stem cell markers are still present.
Even if one or more chemotherapy regimen is identified as being likely to work on a particular cancer, has the science advanced to tell us whether application of the chosen chemotherapy regimen will not cause other changes that also cause cancer to later return and perhaps be even harder to treat? Is it a case of chemotherapy being bad, in cases where it apparently works? Chemotherapy can be mutagenic (changes in form). It might kill off a whole lot of cancer, only to cause a mutation in the remaining cancer, such that the remaining cancer behaves in a more aggressive fashion.
Much more work needs to be done, and oncologists need to adapt treatment to the patient. There are hundreds of chemotherapeutic agents, all of which have approximately the same probability of working. The tumors of different patients have different responses to chemotherapy. It requires individualized treatment based on testing individual properties of each patient's cancer.
Sources:
BMJ2007;334(suppl 1):s1(6January),doi:10.1136/bmj.39034.719942.94
The European Science Foundation
Cell Function Analysis
journal Molecular Biology of the Cell
American Assoication for Cancer Research
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