Trial Information

Effect of Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy on Breast Cancers, Bone Marrow Cancer Cells, and Circulating Cancer Cells

In this study, we propose that persistent disseminated tumor cells (DTC) present after
chemotherapy represent a unique subpopulation of all DTC, are predictors of a poor response
to chemotherapy, and correlate with poor clinical outcome. We hypothesize that
chemotherapy-resistant DTC can be identified by their expression of a unique constellation
of tumor marker proteins which may be similar to those expressed by breast cancer stem
cells. In this research, our specific aims are : 1) to characterize tumor markers expressed
by DTC which are present after chemotherapy, 2) to compare the expression of these markers
to that on DTC detected prior to chemotherapy, 3) to correlate expression of the defined
tumor markers on DTC with clinical outcome of breast cancer patients to identify those
markers that are predictive of disease recurrence, 4) to utilize biomarkers identified in
Specific Aims 1 and 2 to isolate purified DTC for further molecular analysis.