Premium
Predicting Metastasis in Melanoma by Enumerating Circulating Tumor Cells Using Photoacoustic Flow Cytometry
Author(s) -
Edgar Robert H.,
Tarhini Ahmad,
Sander Cindy,
Sanders Martin E.,
Cook Justin L.,
Viator John A.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
lasers in surgery and medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.888
H-Index - 112
eISSN - 1096-9101
pISSN - 0196-8092
DOI - 10.1002/lsm.23286
Subject(s) - melanoma , flow cytometry , medicine , photoacoustic imaging in biomedicine , metastasis , stage (stratigraphy) , pathology , blood flow , metastatic melanoma , oncology , cancer , cancer research , immunology , biology , paleontology , physics , optics
Background and Objectives Enumerating circulating tumor cells has been used as a method of monitoring progression of various cancers. Various methods for detecting circulating melanoma cells (CMCs) have been reported, but none has had sufficient sensitivity to determine if the presence of rare CMCs in the blood of Stage I–III melanoma patients predicts if those patients eventually develop metastatic disease. Study Design We quantified CMCs in serial blood samples from 38 early stage melanoma patients to determine if CMC numbers predict development of metastatic melanoma. CMCs were enumerated using a photoacoustic flow cytometric detection system that uses a laser to induce high frequency acoustic signals in pigmented CMCs. Results We observed that detection of greater than 2 CMCs/ml of blood from patients with Stage I–III melanoma predicts metastatic disease. Of the 11 patients we studied who had two or fewer CMCs detected at all time points tested, none progressed to metastatic disease over a mean follow‐up of 1288 days. In contrast, 18 of the 27 patients (67%) having more than 2 CMCs/ml at one or more time points progressed to metastatic disease over a mean follow‐up of 850 days. Conclusions Photoacoustic flow cytometry can detect rare CMCs in the blood of Stage I–III melanoma patients and detectionof these cells is predictive of subsequent development of metastatic disease. Lasers Surg. Med.