CTCs as a prognostic and predictive biomarker for stage II/III Colon Cancer: a companion study to the PePiTA trial

Françoise Rothé†Email author,
Marion Maetens†,
Ghizlane Rouas,
Marianne Paesmans,
Marc Van den Eynde,
Jean-Luc Van Laethem,
Philippe Vergauwe,
Guido Deboever,
Yacine Bareche,
Caroline Vandeputte,
Michail Ignatiadis and
Alain Hendlisz

†Contributed equally

BMC Cancer201919:304

https://doi.org/10.1186/s12885-019-5528-1

Received: 29 June 2018
Accepted: 27 March 2019
Published: 3 April 2019

Open Peer Review reports

Abstract

Background

Adjuvant therapy improves the prognosis of stage II & III colon cancer patients. Unfortunately, most patients do not benefit from this treatment. PePITA (NCT00994864) is a prospective, multicenter, non-randomized study whose primary objective is to predict the outcome of adjuvant therapy in colon cancer.

Methods

The primary objective was to determine the prognostic and predictive value of circulating tumor cell (CTC) detection before therapy and after one course of preoperative FOLFOX.

Results

Out of the 58 first patients accrued in PePiTA trial, 36 patients participated in the CTC companion study, of whom 32 had at least one evaluable sample. Only 5 patients (14, 95% CI = 5–30%) had ≥1 CTC/22.5 ml blood in at least one of the two timepoints with 2 patients having ≥1 CTC/22.5 ml at baseline (6, 95% CI: 1–19%). The detection rate of patients with CTCs at baseline being lower than expected, the inclusion of patients in the PePiTA CTC substudy was stopped. The limited sample size did not allow us to investigate the prognostic and predictive value of CTCs in locally advanced colon cancer.

Conclusions

Our data illustrate the need for further standardized studies in order to find the most reliable prognostic/predictive biomarker in early-stage colon cancer.