Research Article

Detection of EpCAM-Negative and Cytokeratin-Negative Circulating Tumor Cells in Peripheral Blood

Table 2

Comparison of the number of CTCs captured using single and multiple antibodies, and detected using anti-CK and CEE-Enhanced.

Cancer typeAnti-EpCAMAntibody mixAnti-EpCAMAntibody mix
Cytokeratin stainAdditional CTCs detected with CEE-Enhanced stain

Small Cell Lung Cancer2447+151+148
Prostate127200 (162 )+49+61
Prostate25 (7 )+11+27
Prosate1210+2+25
Colorectal1+4

A third tube of matched blood was processed using the antibody mixture that did not contain anti-EpCAM.
All cells were CD45-negative and DAPI-positive.