2%, which was much higher than that in controls with benign esophageal disease, and DTCs detected in PB and BM of ESCC patients were both associated with lymph metastasis, clinical

find more stage and adverse prognosis. These results indicated that, DTC detection in PB is a non-invasive and more convenient method, but cannot replace that in BM, their combination will contribute to improve the test efficacy, and maybe useful as a diagnostic or prognositc biomarker. Currently, the most important conventional prognostic factors for ESCC are the lesion length, invasion depth and lymph metastasis at the time of diagnosis (pTNM), which largely determines the treatment plan. However, the actual outcome of the disease is not entirely consistent with these clinicopathological parameters. Some patients at an early stage suffer tumor recurrence or metastasis soon after initial treatment, and others at advanced stages have long-term survival [35, 36], which maybe due to the different molecular biology characteristics of their tumors, and DTC status may play an important role. A frequently updated pTNM still fails to discriminate between degrees of selleck chemical malignancy. Thus, in addition to these clinicopathological parameters, molecular markers are being sought in ESCC,

and DTC dection has shown a promising prospect. Our study confirmed that DTC detected either in PB or BM of ESCC patients, which was represented by STC-1 mRNA expression, were both associated with an adverse 2 year PFS. These results were further verified with a Cox proportional hazard model, in which STC-1 mRNA ICG-001 cost expression in PB and/or BM from ESCC patients was found to be an independent unfavorable prognostic factor, apart from regional lymph metastasis and advanced stage.

This suggests that DTC status may be a key factor determing the ESCC outcome. Thus, if a patient is found to be DTC-positive, comprehensive treatment including adjuvant radiochemotherapy should be recommended, which may Fossariinae improve patient survival by eliminating the DTCs and suppressing the micrometastasis. Conclusions In this study, we performed nested RT-PCR to detect a potential representative biomarker of DTCs, STC-1 mRNA expression in PB and BM from ESCC patients. We found that STC-1 mRNA expression is a reliable marker to detect DTCs, and DTC positivity may be a promising indicator for diagnostic and prognostic assessment of ESCC. Acknowledgements Our study would not have been possible without the participation of the patients. The valuable help from the Department of Gastroenterology of Jinling Hospital for sample collection was greatly appreciated. References 1. Zheng S, Vuitton L, Sheyhidin I, Vuitton DA, Zhang Y, Lu X: Northwestern China: a place to learn more on oesophageal cancer. Part one: behavioural and environmental risk factors. Eur J Gastroenterol Hepatol 2010, 22:917–925.PubMedCrossRef 2.