ArticlePloS one2012
Circulating tumor cells in melanoma patients.
Article in PloS one, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 63 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
63 citing papers in PubMed, 91 citations in OpenAlex.
- Exploratory Analyses of Circulating Neoplastic-Immune Hybrid Cells as Prognostic Biomarkers in Advanced Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Trial
- How Do Cancer Cells Fuse and Why?Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2026Review
- Circulating tumor cells as biomarkers in melanoma: techniques, challenges, and clinical applications.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2026Review
- Cell fusion as a driver of metastasis: re-evaluating an old hypothesis in the age of cancer heterogeneity.Frontiers in immunology · 2025Review
- Liquid Biopsy for Cutaneous Melanoma: Opportunities and Challenges in Detecting and Characterizing Circulating Tumor Cells.Journal of dermato-oncology · 2025Article
- Circulating Neoplastic-Immune Hybrid Cells Are Biomarkers of Occult Metastasis and Treatment Response in Pancreatic Cancer.Cancers · 2024Article
- How Much Do You Fuse? A Comparison of Cell Fusion Assays in a Breast Cancer Model.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Article
- Article
- Evaluating circulating tumour cell enrichment techniques to establish an appropriate method for clinical application in glioblastomas.Frontiers in neurology · 2024Article
- Cell Fusion and Syncytia Formation in Cancer.Results and problems in cell differentiation · 2024Review
- The Hallmarks of Circulating Hybrid Cells.Results and problems in cell differentiation · 2024Review
- Characterisation of circulating tumor-associated and immune cells in patients with advanced-stage non-small cell lung cancer.Clinical & translational immunology · 2024Article
- Review
- Circulating tumour cells for early detection of clinically relevant cancer.Nature reviews. Clinical oncology · 2023Review
- Quantification of capture efficiency, purity, and single-cell isolation in the recovery of circulating melanoma cells from peripheral blood by dielectrophoresis.Lab on a chip · 2023Article
- Adopted neoplastic cells and the consequences of their existence.Oncotarget · 2023Article
- Intrinsic signalling factors associated with cancer cell-cell fusion.Cell communication and signaling : CCS · 2023Review
- Extracellular Events Involved in Cancer Cell-Cell Fusion.International journal of molecular sciences · 2022Review
- Fusion Cell Markers in Circulating Tumor Cells from Patients with High-Grade Ovarian Serous Carcinoma.International journal of molecular sciences · 2022Article
- Article
3 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
12 authors at 5 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are of recognized importance for diagnosis and prognosis of cancer patients. With melanoma, most studies do not show any clear relationship between CTC levels and stage of disease. Here, CTCs were enriched (∼400X) from blood of melanoma patients using a simple centrifugation device (OncoQuick), and 4 melanocyte target RNAs (TYR, MLANA, MITF, and MIF) were quantified using QPCR. Approximately one-third of melanoma patients had elevated MIF and MLANA transcripts (p<0.0001 and p<0.001, respectively) compared with healthy controls. In contrast, healthy controls had uniformly higher levels of TYR and MITF than melanoma patients (p<0.0001). There was a marked shift of leukocytes into the CTC-enriched fractions (a 430% increase in RNA recovery, p<0.001), and no relationship between CTC levels and stage of disease was found. CTCs were captured on microfabricated filters and cultured. Captured melanoma CTCs were large cells, and consisted of 2 subpopulations, based on immunoreactivity. One subpopulation (∼50%) stained for both pan-cytokeratin (KRT) markers and the common leukocyte marker CD-45, whereas the second subpopulation stained for only KRT. Since similar cells are described in many cancers, we also examined blood from colorectal and pancreatic cancer patients. We observed analogous results, with most captured CTCs staining for both CD-45/KRT markers (and for the monocyte differentiation marker CD-14). Our results suggest that immature melanocyte-related cells (expressing TYR and MITF RNA) may circulate in healthy controls, although they are not readily detectable without considerable enrichment. Further, as early-stage melanomas develop, immature melanocyte migration into the blood is somehow curtailed, whereas a significant proportion of patients develop elevated CTC levels (based on MIF and MLANA RNAs). The nature of the captured CTCs is consistent with literature describing leukocyte/macrophage-tumor cell fusion hybrids, and their role in metastatic progression.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.