ArticleMolecular oncology2025
Characterizing epithelial-mesenchymal transition-linked heterogeneity in breast cancer circulating tumor cells at a single-cell level.
Article in Molecular oncology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Mitochondrial transcript abundance in breast cancer circulating tumour cells may reflect both blood-derived transcripts and biological heterogeneity.Clinical & experimental metastasis · 2026Article
- Tissue-Resident Macrophage in Inflammation and Cancer.MedComm · 2026Review
- Non-Invasive Diagnosis of Early Breast Cancer: Current and Emerging Liquid Biopsy Biomarkers.Cancers · 2026Review
- Nano-biosensors for circulating tumor markers: advancing liquid biopsy toward precision cancer diagnostics.Journal of cancer research and clinical oncology · 2026Review
- Serum amyloid A1 promote progression of breast cancer and is associated with epithelial-mesenchymal transition.Translational cancer research · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
15 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) generates heterogeneity in circulating tumor cells (CTCs), affecting their biological properties and hampering their detection. This limits our understanding of the mechanisms underlying hematogenous dissemination, especially in early breast cancer (BC), where CTCs are rare. Here, we aimed to detect CTCs with different EMT statuses from BC patients. CTCs in blood samples from 107 BC patients were evaluated using immunomagnetic depletion and multi-marker immunofluorescence (EpCAM, E-cadherin, MCAM, cell surface vimentin, CD31, CD45), followed by single-cell transcriptomics. CTCs were detected in 51.9% of therapy-naïve early BC cases, with 3.8% showing only epithelial CTCs (eCTCs), 5.8% epithelial-mesenchymal (emCTCs), 26.0% mesenchymal (mCTCs), and 16.3% mixed phenotypes. CTC heterogeneity was more frequent in triple-negative (86%) than in luminal BC (17%, P = 0.008). Lymph node involvement strongly predicted dissemination of all CTC phenotypes, while tumor size correlated with mCTC abundance. Single-cell RNA sequencing revealed downregulation of ribosomal genes and translation inhibition in CTCs with mesenchymal features, linked to mTORC1 signaling. Findings were also validated in an independent dataset, highlighting vulnerabilities in CTCs during dissemination.
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Registered trials
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