Melanoma is the deadliest skin cancer and is responsible for over 7000 deaths in the US annually. The spread of cancer, or metastasis, is responsible for these deaths, as secondary tumors interrupt normal organ function. Circulating tumor cells, or those cells that spread throughout the body from the primary tumor, are thought to be responsible for metastasis. We developed an optical method, photoacoustic flow cytometry, in order to detect and enumerate circulating melanoma cells (CMCs) from blood samples of patients. We tested the blood of Stage IV melanoma patients to show the ability of the photoacoustic flow cytometer to detect these rare cells in blood. We then tested the system on archived blood samples from Stage III melanoma patients with known outcomes to determine if detection of CMCs can predict future metastasis. We detected between 0 and 66 CMCs in Stage IV patients. For the Stage III study, we found that of those samples with CMCs, two remained disease free and five developed metastasis. Of those without CMCs, six remained disease free and one developed metastasis. We believe that photoacoustic detection of CMCs provides valuable information for the prediction of metastasis and we postulate a system for more accurate prognosis.

中文翻译：

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晚期患者循环黑色素瘤细胞的光声检测

黑色素瘤是最致命的皮肤癌，每年在美国造成 7000 多人死亡。癌症的扩散或转移是造成这些死亡的原因，因为继发性肿瘤会中断正常的器官功能。循环肿瘤细胞，或从原发性肿瘤扩散到全身的那些细胞，被认为是造成转移的原因。我们开发了一种光学方法，即光声流式细胞术，以检测和计数患者血液样本中的循环黑色素瘤细胞 (CMC)。我们测试了 IV 期黑色素瘤患者的血液，以显示光声流式细胞仪检测血液中这些稀有细胞的能力。然后，我们对来自具有已知结果的 III 期黑色素瘤患者的存档血液样本测试了该系统，以确定 CMC 的检测是否可以预测未来的转移。我们在 IV 期患者中检测到 0 到 66 个 CMC。对于 III 期研究，我们发现在具有 CMC 的那些样本中，两个保持无病状态，五个发生转移。在没有 CMC 的患者中，6 人保持无病状态，1 人发生转移。我们相信 CMC 的光声检测为预测转移提供了有价值的信息，我们假设了一个更准确预后的系统。