Genomic profiling of viable and proliferative micrometastatic cells from early-stage breast cancer patients

Purpose: Metastases in distant organs are the major cause of death for cancer patients, and bone marrow is a prominent homing organ for early disseminated cancer cells. However, it remains still unclear which of these cells evolve into overt metastases. We therefore established a new approach based on the analysis of viable and proliferating cancer cells by single-cell comparative genomic hybridization. Experimental Design: The bone marrow of early-stage breast tumor patients (pN(0)M(0)) was screened for tumor cells by immunostaining. By applying special short-term culturing, we selected for viable and proliferative tumor cells. The short-term culturing allowed us to evaluate the proliferative potential of micrometastatic cells, which we had previously shown to represent an independent prognostic marker. We assessed genomic changes in single disseminated cancer cells by single-cell comparative genomic hybridization. Results: We found that these viable disseminated cancer cells already had a plethora of copy number changes in their genome. All of these cells showed chromosomal copy number changes with a substantial intercellular heterogeneity and differences to the matching primary tumors. Conclusions: The established experimental strategy might pave the way for the identification of metastatic stem cells in cancer patients. Our preliminary results support the new concept that early disseminated cancer cells evolve independently from their primary tumor.