GENOTYPIC AND PHENOTYPIC ANALYSIS OF CIRCULATING TUMOR CELLS TO MONITOR TUMOR EVOLUTION IN PROSTATE CANCER PATIENTS

摘要

The present invention provides methods for predicting response to a hormone-directed therapy or chemotherapy in a prostate cancer (PCa) patient comprising (a) performing a direct analysis comprising immunofluorescent staining and morphological characterization of nucleated cells in a blood sample obtained from the patient to identify and enumerate circulating tumor cells (CTC); (b) individually characterizing genotypic, morphometric and protein expression parameters to generate a profile for each of the CTCs, and (c) predicting response to hormone-directed therapy in the prostate cancer PCa patient based on said profile. In some embodiments, the methods comprise repeating steps (a) through (c) at one or more timepoints after initial diagnosis of prostate cancer to sequentially monitor said genotypic, morphometric and protein expression parameters.