Abstract 2421: Circulating tumor cells reveal the genetic evolution of metastatic breast cancer
Authors: Simon A. Joosse, Anna Babayan, Katharina Prieske, Daniela Indenbirken, Malik Alawi, Eike C. Burandt, Adam Grundhoff, Volkmar Müller, Klaus Pantel
Journal: Cancer Research (2016)

Abstract BACKGROUND. Anti-cancer treatment failure is caused by the genetic and phenotypic heterogeneous properties of the disease. Early dissemination of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) into the blood circulation of cancer patients allows for parallel genetic evolution of the primary tumor and metastases. This study investigated the genomic make-up of CTCs originating from metastasis as a so called “liquid biopsy” and compared these with the different clones of the archived autologous primary tumor on single cell level. METHODS. From two breast cancer patients, individual CTCs were isolated from blood using Ficoll density gradient followed by micromanipulation of keratin positive cells. Single cells from archived primary breast tumors from the same patients were captured by laser microdissection. DNA was isolated and amplified by whole genome amplification and copy number alterations (CNA) were obtained by shallow, whole genome next generations sequencing (NGS). RESULTS. From the first breast cancer patient, the genomes from 50 single cells from the primary tumor were sequenced. An unsupervised phylogenetic cluster analysis based on CNA revealed five distinct subclones that displayed increasing chromosomal instability from the first to the last cluster. Using support vector machine (SVM) learning, the CNA profiles of 42 CTCs were residing mostly to the first three clones with few chromosomal aberrations, whereas only one CTC resided to the fourth clone and none to the last with many chromosomal aberrations. The tumor from a second breast cancer patient displayed the presence of three genetically distinct clones with increasing chromosomal instability after sequencing 11 single cells. CTCs (n = 12) from this patient at metastatic disease were classified to the last branch using SVM, however with low probability. After repeating unsupervised clustering on the genomes of the primary tumor tissue and CTCs, a fourth branch was formed with CTCs only. CONCLUSION. Our results suggest that therapy resistant metastases in breast cancer patients can originate from tumor clones from early stages of tumor evolution and may genetically still be similar (patient 1). On the other hand, further genetic progression may also take place (patient 2) after which the genetic landscape of the metastasis does not resemble the primary tumor anymore. These results underline the importance of “liquid biopsy” in the diagnosis of metastatic cancer. Citation Format: Simon A. Joosse, Anna Babayan, Katharina Prieske, Daniela Indenbirken, Malik Alawi, Eike C. Burandt, Adam Grundhoff, Volkmar Müller, Klaus Pantel. Circulating tumor cells reveal the genetic evolution of metastatic breast cancer. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2016 Apr 16-20; New Orleans, LA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2016;76(14 Suppl):Abstract nr 2421.