Detecting Micro Hepatocellular Cancer Cells In Peripheral Blood Of The Patients With Hepatocellular Carcinoma And Its Clinical Significance

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common malignant tumors over the world, the long-term survive rate was poor. It was reported that cancer cell disseminating from the focus into the circulation before or during surgery might be an important reason of its high mortality. In our study, we developed a novel method, enriching tumor cell by positive and negative immunomagnetic bead prior to nested RT-PCR of amplification of AFP mRNA, to detect circulating tumor cells early, which may choose optimal therapy for the patients, and have a substantial clinical impact on prognosis.91 patients, who were mainly from the First Hospital of Ningbo and the Epidemical Hospital of Ningbo, were included in this study from September 2003 to December 2004. There were 43 patients with HCC, 16 with liver cirrhosis (LC), 20 with hepatitis, 6 with metastasis liver cancer and 6 with HCC postsurgery. In addition, 18 blood samples were collected from the healthy donors as the control. Informed consent was obtained from all patients and healthy donors. In the spiking experiments using HepG2 cells, one HepG2 cell could be detected in 5mL blood with immunomagnetic beads sorting and nested RT-PCR technique. In the subsequent clinic experiments, The total positive detection rate was 72.1%, 43.8%, 25.0%, 100%, and 66.7% respectively in patients with HCC untreated, liver cirrhosis (LC), hepatitis, metastasis liver cancer, and postsurgery of hepatocellular carcinoma. There was significantly different among the patients with HCC, LC and hepatitis (HCC vs LC, P<0.05; HCC vs hepatitis, P<0.01) and between Class A and Class B of the HCC patients (P<0.05). Meanwhile, AFP mRNA expressed markedly in HCC patients compared to the...