Abstract 4815: A novel AR splice variant identified in circulating tumor cells from castration-resistant prostate cancer patient blood as a potentially prognostic biomarker

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are rare cancer cells circulating in the bloodstream that are thought to have a key role in cancer metastasis. They have been associated with worse prognosis in several major cancer types. There is an intense interest in the molecular analysis of CTC to gain information that would assist treatment decisions and potentially improve the disease outcome. There are enormous interests in the analysis of CTCs for castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) due to the nature of the tumor that tends to metastasize to bone, making them generally inaccessible to obtain biopsies. In this study, we applied a surface marker independent, label-free cell trap microfluidics device for CTCs isolation and retrieval based on cell size and deformability. A total of 47 blood samples drawn from 36 patients with CRPC were preceded for CTC isolation followed by molecular characterization using epithelial tumor markers and prostate cancer specific markers. We identified a novel androgen receptor (AR) splice variant from four patients' CTCs, and confirmed by DNA sequencing that this variant lacks a 554bp region in the ligand binding domain of the receptor in comparison with wild type human AR. Patients with this splice variant were found to be associated with poor survival (p Note: This abstract was not presented at the meeting. Citation Format: Zhigang Kang, Yunkai Yu, Liang Cao, Paul S. Meltzer, Yuelin Zhu, Avan Shah, James Gulley, William Duht, Ravi Madan, Ali Bhagat, Kyra Zhao. A novel AR splice variant identified in circulating tumor cells from castration-resistant prostate cancer patient blood as a potentially prognostic biomarker. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr 4815. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-4815