Sensitive molecular detection of small nodal metastasis in uterine cervical cancer using HPV16-E6/CK19/MUC1 cancer biomarkers.

Sensitive molecular detection of small nodal metastasis in uterine cervical cancer using HPV16-E6/CK19/MUC1 cancer biomarkers. Oncotarget. 2018 Apr 24;9(31):21641-21654 Authors: Samouëlian V, Mechtouf N, Leblanc E, Cardin GB, Lhotellier V, Querleu D, Révillion F, Rodier F Abstract Metastatic nodal involvement is a critical prognostic factor in uterine cervical cancer (UCC). To improve current methods of detecting UCC metastases in lymph nodes (LNs), we used quantitative PCR (qPCR) to assess mRNA expression of potential metastatic biomarkers. We found that expression of HPV16-E6, cytokeratin19 (CK19), and mucin1 (MUC1) is consistently upregulated in tumors and metastatic tissues, supporting a role for these genes in UCC progression. These putative biomarkers were able to predict the presence of histologically positive metastatic LNs with respective sensitivities and specificities of 82% and 99% (CK19), 76% and 95% (HPV16-E6), and 76% and 78% (MUC1). While the biomarkers failed to detect 1.7% to 2.2% of the histologically positive LNs when used individually, combining CK19 and HPV16-E6 enhanced sensitivity and specificity to 100% and 94%, respectively. To explore the sensitivity of qPCR-based detection of varying proportions of invading HPV16-positive UCC cells, we designed a LN metastasis model that achieved a fresh cell detection limit of 0.008% (1:12500 HPV16-positive to HPV16-negative cells), and a paraffin-embedded, formalin-fix...
Source: Oncotarget - Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: Oncotarget Source Type: research