Presentation Titles and Distinguished Speakers Included on the DVD:

The Clinical Utility of Circulating Tumor Cell Analysis – What Have We Learned So Far?
Beverly C. Handy, M.D., M.S., Associate Professor, Clinical Chemistry, Department of Laboratory Medicine, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
Metastatic cancers, even when of the same tissue type, show considerable variability in their clinical behavior. Prognostic indicators that are of proven value in predicting disease aggressiveness and response to therapy are therefore, extremely useful aides for optimizing individual treatment planning. Among these, a growing body of literature indicates that the enumeration of circulating tumor cells (CTC) from peripheral blood can serve as an independent prognostic marker for clinically managing patients with some types of metastatic cancers. In particular, the level of CTC has been shown to be predictive of survival in breast, colorectal, and prostate metastatic disease. It is likely that it will be useful in tumors of other organs as well. Additional potential applications include evaluation of treatment response and use in disease staging. Isolation of CTC also offer potential opportunities for further analysis and molecular characterization of these cells, which may allow further optimization of treatment.

Detection of Circulating Tumor Cells in the Blood of Cancer Patients using a Process which Only Depletes Normal Cells
Jeffrey J. Chalmers, Ph.D., Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering; Director, University Cell Analysis and Sorting Core, The Ohio State University
We have developed a process which utilizes a unbiased negative enrichment protocol that depletes the normal blood cells to give an enriched and relatively pure CTC cell suspension. In this presentation we demonstrate that our technique is capable of detecting a significant number of CTCs in the peripheral blood of Head and Neck Cancer and Breast Cancer patients with high levels of sensitivity. Since the outcome of our negative depletion, enrichment process is a cell suspension, the final product can be further analyzed. In almost all cases, cells that are positive for cytokeratins are also positive for vimentin, and CD44 or EGFR, and depending on the patient, we observe a significant number of patients that are cytokerain negative, but vimentin and either CD44 or EGFR positive.

Multiplexed Profiling of Individual Circulating Tumor Cells using a Hyperspectral Imaging System
Harold Garner, Ph.D., Executive Director, Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, Virginia Tech; Scientific Advisor, Xanapath LLC
A new hyperspectral microscope imaging system, named the Intelligent Single Cell Optical Profiling Engine (“I-SCOPE”), is capable of analyzing tumor marker expression levels in individual, intact cells. The system quantifies multiplexed cocktails of engineered fluorophores conjugated to up to 13 markers. Results from analyses of tumor cells in a variety of specimen types will be reviewed.