| Budget Amount *help |
¥2,800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,800,000)
Fiscal Year 2004: ¥1,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,300,000)
Fiscal Year 2003: ¥1,500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,500,000)
|
|---|
| Research Abstract |
In detection of cancer cells in the blood or in the peritoneal washings by real-time RT-PCR method, CEA mRNA was found as most sensitive and reliable marker than cytokeratins. Total RNA was extracted from 1.5 ml of peripheral blood from 59 patients with gastric cancer and 15 patients with cholecystolithiasis (control) before and after operation. CEA was used as a probe to detect gastric cancer cells in samples using a real-time RT-PCR. As results, CEA mRNA positive cells were not found in the peripheral blood of the control patients either before or after operation, nor in the peripheral blood of the gastric cancer patients before operation. However, CEA mRNA positive cells were detected in 46% of the patients just after gastrectomy, though these circulating cancer cells disappeared from peripheral blood within 2 post-operative days. In 55 patients who underwent a curative operation, the risk for cancer recurrence (10/30;33%) in 30 patients who did not show circulating cancer cells postoperatively was higher than that for cancer recurrence (3/25;12%) in 25 patients with positive for circulating cancer cells (p=0.064). As a result, the presence of blood circulating tumor cells just after surgery tends to correlate with a low rate of tumor recurrence in patients operated on for gastric cancer. These findings indicate that a gastrectomy may spread gastric cancer cells into the peripheral blood from primary tumors, however, such circulating cancer cells may be destroyed within a short time. The detection of circulating cancer cells may therefore be a marker for a possibly better prognosis in patients with gastric cancer. Moreover, intraperitoneal chemotherapy(IPC) effectiveness may correlate with elevation of gene expression of inflammatory cytokines, such as IL-2 and IL-6 in the peritoneal cavity after IPC. However, the prognostic benefits of IPC for scirrhous gastric cancer(SGC) patients remains unclear.
|
