Prospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Dec 14, 2016; 22(46): 10232-10241
Published online Dec 14, 2016. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v22.i46.10232
Long-term prognostic impact of circulating tumour cells in gastric cancer patients
Hiroaki Ito, Jun Sato, Yukio Tsujino, Noriko Yamaguchi, Satoshi Kimura, Keigo Gohda, Katsuhiro Murakami, Manabu Onimaru, Tohru Ohmori, Fumihiro Ishikawa, Haruhiro Inoue
Hiroaki Ito, Manabu Onimaru, Haruhiro Inoue, Department of Surgery, Digestive Disease Center, Showa University Koto Toyosu Hospital, Tokyo 135-8577, Japan
Jun Sato, Yukio Tsujino, Keigo Gohda, Katsuhiro Murakami, Central Research Laboratories, Sysmex Corporation, Kobe 651-2271, Japan
Noriko Yamaguchi, Department of Surgery, Digestive Disease Center, Showa University Northern Yokohama Hospital, Yokohama 224-8503, Japan
Satoshi Kimura, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Central Clinical Laboratory, Showa University Northern Yokohama Hospital, Yokohama 224-8503, Japan
Tohru Ohmori, Institute of Molecular Oncology, Showa University School of Medicine, Tokyo 142-8555, Japan
Fumihiro Ishikawa, Department of Cancer Cell Biology, Showa University School of Pharmacy, Tokyo 142-8555, Japan
Author contributions: Ito H conceived and designed the experiments, collected blood samples, performed the experiments, managed clinical examination, performed treatment of individual patients, delivered clinical data, and performed the statistical analysis and data interpretation; Sato J, Tsujino Y, Gohda K, and Murakami K analysed the blood cells in the peripheral blood samples from the patients; Yamaguchi N and Onimaru M managed clinical examination, performed treatment of individual patients, and delivered clinical data; Kimura S participated in the study design, maintained the equipment, including the test tubes, and performed data interpretation; Ohmori T and Ishikawa F participated in the study design and performed data interpretation; Inoue H participated in the study design, performed treatment of individual patients, and performed data interpretation; all authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
Supported by a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research (in part), No. 23659308; and JSPS KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research, No. 26460688.
Institutional review board statement: The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Showa University, Northern Yokohama Hospital (No. 0903-03).
Clinical trial registration statement: This study was registered with the University Hospital Medical Information Network in Japan, UMIN000004026.
Informed consent statement: The study protocol was explained to the patients and volunteers before written informed consent was obtained.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Hiroaki Ito, MD, Department of Surgery, Digestive Disease Center, Showa University Koto Toyosu Hospital, 5-1-38 Toyosu, Koto-ku, Tokyo 135-8577, Japan. h.ito@med.showa-u.ac.jp
Telephone: +81-3-62046000 Fax: +81-3-62046396
Received: August 19, 2016
Peer-review started: August 22, 2016
First decision: September 12, 2016
Revised: September 27, 2016
Accepted: October 27, 2016
Article in press: October 27, 2016
Published online: December 14, 2016
Core Tip

Core tip: We show the long-term prognostic impact of circulating tumour cells (CTCs) in 65 patients with gastric cancer in this report. OBP-401, a telomerase-specific, replication-selective, oncolytic adenoviral agent carrying the green fluorescent protein gene, was used to label CTCs. A lower number of CTCs was correlated with higher relapse-free survival rates in patients with gastric cancer.