The Clinical Application Of Circulating Tumor Cell Counts In Hormone-sensitive Prostate Cancer

Objective： To determine the role of circulating tumor cells in the prognosis ofhormone-sensitive prostate cancer(HSPC)， an analysis was performed onhormone-sensitive prostate cancer patients by comparing their CTC counts, clinicalfeatures, their bone scan and CT/MRI results、Gleason score and serum biomarkers, suchas PSA.Methods: We analyzed CTC counts by using the CellSearch platform in conjunction withother classic biomarkers in25patients with HSPC initiating androgen deprivation therapy（69.2±5.0years old）treated at the1stAffiliated Hospital of Soochow University. andcorrelated these patients with prognostic prostate-specific antigen (PSA) endpoints.Results： Pre-therapeutic CTC counts correlated positively with bone metastasis(P=0.039),clinical stages (P=0.013), post-therapeutic PSA level (P=0.000), and wereunrelated to lactate dehydrogenase (P=0.267， t=1.138)， alkaline phosphatase(P=0.068,t=2.007), initial PSA leve（lP=0.183）and soft tissue metastatsis（P=0.378）.ROCcurves were made to compare between serum PSA, LDH, AKP level and CTC counts.AUC of the CTC counts is0.971（P=0.000）.Threshold analysis revealed the cutpoint thatoptimized specificity and sensitivity of the test to be3cells per7.5mL whole blood.Conclusion：1.CTC enumeration is associated with the clinical features of prostate cancer patients.2.CTC enumeration may identify patients with better therapeutic effect before initiation ofandrogen deprivation therapy.