ArticleCancer cell international2026
Performance and pilot clinical validation of MALDITEC-CTC: a circulating tumor cell detection platform using whole-cell MALDI-TOF MS fingerprinting in osteosarcoma.
Article in Cancer cell international, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
18 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundOsteosarcoma is a highly metastatic bone malignancy, with hematogenous spread as the leading cause of mortality. Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) offer a minimally invasive window to detect metastatic potential and real-time tumor dynamics. However, detecting osteosarcoma CTCs is challenging due to their rarity in the bloodstream and eligibility for positive-enrichment methods targeting epithelial markers.
methodsWe developed MALDI Technology Enabling Classification of Circulating Tumor Cell (MALDITEC-CTC), a novel platform that combines negative-selection CTC enrichment with MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry for osteosarcoma CTC detection. A custom main spectrum profile (MSP) database was generated from normal cells, carcinoma and sarcoma cell lines, patient-derived osteosarcoma cells (PDCs), and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). Using the MALDI Biotyper, CTCs in blood samples were identified by log(score) matching against the MSP database. Diagnostic performance was evaluated in 12 osteosarcoma patients and 11 healthy donors.
resultsCTC-enriched samples from patients showed high log(score) matches to their corresponding PDCs, supporting accurate identification. At the cut-off score of 1.625, MALDITEC-CTC achieved 67% sensitivity and 90.9% specificity with an area under the curve of 0.871 for distinguishing patients from healthy donors. Importantly, CTC-positive patients showed a higher tendency to develop metastasis than CTC-negative patients, indicating potential prognostic value.
conclusionsMALDITEC-CTC demonstrates the clinical feasibility of a rapid, label-free, proteomics-based approach for detecting osteosarcoma CTCs. This platform may enable early risk stratification for metastasis and non-invasive monitoring of tumor progression in osteosarcoma patients.
Indexed as
Identifiers
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.