Expression Of C-kit And EGFR In Peripheral Blood Can React CTC For Patients With Gastrointestinal Cancer

Objective: This study is to detect ifthere are differences ofC-kit and EGFRexpression in the peripheral blood of patients with gastrointestinal tumors andnormal human by flow cytometry, therefore to indirectly indicate the presence ofcirculating tumor cells (CTC) in peripheral blood of cancer patients.Methods:We collect samples from82cancer patients who was initiallydiagnosed as tumor patients, without any surgery, radiotherapy or chemotherapy andfrom78non-cancer patients. We collect peripheral blood4ml, discard1ml, lysis of redblood cells, antibody incubation, and flow cytometry. And the impact of age, gender, etcfor antibody expression were excluded. In addition, we collect basic information of thepatient’s smoking, drinking, family history.Results:(1) We found the expression of C-kit and EGFR was statisticallysignificant (P <0.05) higher in patients with gastrointestinal tumors than in non-tumorpatients. We also found that both the expression of C-kit and EGFR were associatedwith the degree of tumor differentiation, tumor staging, the patient drinking and family history (P <0.05), and has little to do with smoking.(2)We found that C-kit expressionlinearly related to the expression of the EGFR in the gastrointestinal tumor patients.Conclusions:Compared to normal subjects, patients with gastrointestinal tumors,C-kit and EGFR display higher expression. And the expression was correlated todegree of tumor differentiation and tumor staging. Therefore, our results inferred thatthe expression of the two antibodies can be indirect indication of circulating tumorcells in the peripheral and could be a novel method for monitoring CTC in patientswith gastrointestinal tumors.