Original Article In vitro culturing of viable circulating tumor cells of urinary bladder cancer

Objective: Approximately one third of patients diagnosed with muscle-invasive urinary bladder cancer (UBC) have undetected metastases at the time of treatment of the primary tumor. Currently there are no reliable specific serum markers for monitoring and evaluating risk profiles of urothelial cancers. Several studies suggest that detection of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) may correlate with the disease status and prognosis at baseline and early in the treatment of cancers. In this study a new way of isolation and in vitro cultivation of CTCs of urinary bladder cancer was introduced. Materials and methods: Peripheral blood (PB) samples from 53 patients who had under- gone urological procedure were evaluated using the MetaCell device (MetaCell s.r.o., Ostrava, Czech Republic). The patients enrolled in the study were both oncological patients with UBC and non-oncological patients with inflamma - tion (14 patients). The sensitivity and quantification of CTCs were evaluated. The separated CTCs were cultured in vitro. Results: 39 patients with confirmed UBC were enrolled in the study. CTCs were detected in 25 (64%) patients, and most of these patients had between 6 and 10 cells. The separated CTCs were successfully cultured in vitro. Conclusion: CTCs were detected in a higher percentage of patients than in other studies. This paper describes the first successful culturing of human UBC cells. The MetaCell approach used in this study enabled the capture of vi - able intact virgin CTCs (virgin CTC) suitable for next in vitro culturing, single cell analysis or drug testing.