Circulating tumor cells with epithelial-mesenchymal transition markers as potential biomarkers for the diagnosis of lung cancer

Table 1 Demographic and clinical data of cases and controls

Subjects	Gender (n)	Mean age in yr	Pathologic features (n)	Stage (n)	Size in cm
Lung cancer patients (n = 106)	Male (47), Female (59)	59	AAH (1)	Ia (84)	2.03 ± 1.06
			AIS (10)	Ib (10)
			MIA (11)	IIa (2)
			IAC (83)	IIb (7)
				III (3)
Benign controls (n = 11)	Male (4), Female (7)	49	IPT (6)1	NA
			Tuberculoma (2)
			Hamartoma (1)
			Fibroma (1)
			Pleural tumor (1)
Healthy controls (n = 17)	Male (10), Female (7)	31	NA	NA	NA

¹One inflammatory pseudotumor and one pleural tumor cases presented as ground-glass opacity. AAH: Atypical adenomatous hyperplasia; AIS: Adenocarcinoma in situ; IAC: Invasive adenocarcinoma; IPT: Inflammatory pseudotumor; MIA: Minimally invasive adenocarcinoma; NA: Not available.

Table 2 Area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, P value, sensitivity and specificity of circulating tumor cells

Subjects	All lung cancer patients, n = 106			Lung cancer patients presenting as GGO, n = 42
	AUC	P value	Sensitivity	AUC	P value	Sensitivity	Specificity
Total CTCs	0.828	< 0.0001	79.24%	0.7963	< 0.0001	71.42%	82.14%
E-CTCs	0.6193	0.0527	50.00%	0.6029	0.1469	47.62%	71.43%
M-CTCs	0.6892	0.0021	49.05%	0.6722	0.0152	42.85%	89.29%
E&M-CTCs	0.7648	< 0.0001	69.80%	0.7504	0.0004	66.67%	82.14%
Total CTCs and E&M-CTCs			85.85%			80.95%	78.57%

AUC: Area under the ROC curve; CTCs: Circulating tumor cells; E-CTCs: CTCs with epithelial markers; E&M-CTCs: CTCs with both markers; GGO: Ground-glass opacities; M-CTCs: CTCs with mesenchymal markers; ROC: Receiver operating characteristic.

Table 3 Validation of Canpatrol^TM by CytoploRare in 20 lung cancer cases and 18 controls

		Total CTCs detected by CanpatrolTM		E&M-CTCs detected by CytoploRare
		Positive, n	Negative, n	Positive, n	Negative, n
FR-CTCs	Positive, n	16	4	17	6
	Negative, n	7	11	6	9
Kappa/P value		0.415/0.010		0.339/0.037

CTCs: Circulating tumor cells; E&M-CTCs: CTCs with both markers; FR: Folate receptor.