Trial reportMolecular oncology2025
Circulating tumor cells in metastatic breast cancer patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors - a biomarker analysis of the ALICE and ICON trials.
Trial report in Molecular oncology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- NNMT-associated metabolic-thromboinflammatory-immune co-activation in heterogeneous CTC clusters: a hypothesis-generating computational framework".BMC cancer · 2026Article
- Do Metastatic Cells Arise from PD-L1International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Review
- Liquid Biopsy and Multi-Omic Biomarkers in Breast Cancer: Innovations in Early Detection, Therapy Guidance, and Disease Monitoring.Biomedicines · 2025Review
- Biomarker prediction of immunotherapy response in breast cancer: from single markers to multi-omics integration.NPJ breast cancer · 2025Review
- Association of potential biomarkers with clinical outcomes in metastatic triple-negative breast cancer treated with pembrolizumab or chemotherapy.NPJ breast cancer · 2025Article
- Circulating tumor cells: Blood-based detection, molecular biology, and clinical applications.Cancer cell · 2025Review
- Monoclonal antibody immune therapy response instrument for stratification and cost-effective personalized approaches in 3PM-guided pan cancer management.The EPMA journal · 2025Review
- Liquid biopsy for guiding breast cancer immunotherapy.Immunotherapy · 2025Review
- Single-cell expression and immune infiltration analysis of polyamine metabolism in breast cancer.Discover oncology · 2024Article
- Advances in biomarkers for immunotherapy in small-cell lung cancer.Frontiers in immunology · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
14 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have been introduced in breast cancer (BC) treatment and better biomarkers are needed to predict benefit. Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are prognostic in BC, but knowledge is limited on CTCs in the context of ICI therapy. In this study, serial sampling of CTCs (CellSearch system) was evaluated in 82 patients with metastatic BC enrolled in two randomized trials investigating ICI plus chemotherapy. Programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression on CTCs was also measured. Patients with ≥ 2 CTCs per 7.5 mL at baseline had gene expression profiles in tumor suggestive of increased T-cell activity, including increased tumor inflammation signature (TIS) in both triple-negative (P = 0.010) and hormone receptor-positive (P = 0.024) disease. Patients with luminal A BC had higher CTC levels. The association between CTC status and outcome was most apparent 4 weeks into therapy. PD-L1 expression in CTCs was observed in 6/17 CTC-positive patients and was associated with inferior survival. In conclusion, our study indicates that CTC numbers may inform on tumor immune composition, as well as prognosis. These findings suggest a potential of using CTCs as an accessible biomarker source in BC patients treated with immunotherapy.
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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.