Volume 74, Issue 13 p. 1297-1307
Original Article

Nanomechanical biomarkers of single circulating tumor cells for detection of castration resistant prostate cancer

Pawel Osmulski,

Department of Molecular Medicine, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, Texas

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Devalingam Mahalingam,

Cancer Therapy and Research Center, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, Texas

Department of Medicine, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, Texas

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Maria E. Gaczynska,

Department of Molecular Medicine, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, Texas

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Joseph Liu,

Department of Molecular Medicine, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, Texas

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Susan Huang,

Department of Molecular Medicine, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, Texas

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Aaron M. Horning,

Integrated Biomedical Science Graduate Program, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, Texas

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Chiou-Miin Wang,

Department of Molecular Medicine, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, Texas

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Ian M. Thompson,

Cancer Therapy and Research Center, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, Texas

Department of Urology, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, Texas

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Tim H.-M. Huang,

Department of Molecular Medicine, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, Texas

Cancer Therapy and Research Center, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, Texas

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Chun-Liang Chen,

Corresponding Author

Department of Molecular Medicine, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, Texas

Cancer Therapy and Research Center, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, Texas

Correspondence to: Chun-Liang Chen, PhD, Department of Molecular Medicine, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, 7703 Floyd Curl Dr., Mail code: 8257, San Antonio, Tx 78229-3900. E-mail: chenc4@uthscsa.eduSearch for more papers by this author
First published: 25 July 2014
Citations: 26
Pawel Osmulski and Devalingam Mahalingam contributed equally to this work.

Abstract

BACKGROUND

Emerging evidence shows that nanomechanical phenotypes of circulating tumor cells (CTC) could become potential biomarkers for metastatic castration resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC).

METHODS

To determine the nanomechanical phenotypes of CTCs we applied atomic force microscopy (AFM) employing the PeakForce quantitative nanomechanical (QNM) imaging. We assessed biophysical parameters (elasticity, deformation, and adhesion) of 130 CTCs isolated from blood samples from five castration sensitive (CS) and 12 castration resistant prostate cancer (CRPCa) patients.

RESULTS

We found that CTCs from CRPCa patients are three times softer, three times more deformable, and seven times more adhesive than counterparts from CSPCa patients. Both nonsupervised hierarchical clustering and principle component analysis show that three combined nanomechanical parameters could constitute a valuable set to distinguish between CSPCa and CRPCa.

CONLUSIONS

Our study indicates that nanomechanical phenotypes of CTCs may serve as novel and effective biomarkers for mCRPC. Prostate 74: 1297–1307, 2014. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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