Circulating tumor cell is a common property of brain glioma and promotes the monitoring system

Abstract

Brain glioma is the most common primary intracranial tumor characterized by dismal prognosis and frequent recurrence, yet a real-time and reliable biological approach to monitor tumor response and progression is still lacking. Recently, few studies have reported that circulating tumor cells (CTCs) could be detected in glioblastoma multiform (GBM), providing the possibility of its application in brain glioma monitoring system. But its application limits still exist, because the detection rate of CTCs is still low and was exclusively limited to high- grade gliomas. Here, we adopted an advanced integrated cellular and molecular approach of SE-iFISH to detect CTCs in the peripheral blood (PB) of patients with 7 different subtypes of brain glioma, uncovering the direct evidences of glioma migration. We identified CTCs in the PB from 24 of 31 (77%) patients with glioma in all 7 subtypes. No statistical difference of CTC incidence and count was observed in different pathological subtypes or WHO grades of glioma. Clinical data revealed that CTCs, to some extent, was superior to MRI in monitoring the treatment response and differentiating radionecrosis from recurrence of glioma. Conclusively, CTCs is a common property of brain gliomas of various pathological subtypes, which has provided an ultimate paradox for the hypothesis “soil and seed”. It can be used to monitor the microenvironment of gliomas dynamically, which will be a meaningful complement to radiographic imaging.