The Detection of Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) in Patients With Breast Cancer Undergoing Cryosurgery Combined With DC-CIK Treatment

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) have the potential to provide a surrogate for'real-time biopsy' of tumor biological activity. Enumeration and molecular characterization of CTCs in breast cancer could play an important role in diagnosis, predicting the risk for tumor recurrence, and providing novel target therapy biomarkers. In view of these facts, the investigators wanted to demonstrate the value of multiparameter flow cytometry in detecting human tumor cells of breast cancer in normal peripheral blood after cryosurgery with or without dendritic cell(DC)-cytokine-induced killers(CIK) treatment, and the investigators also compared the specificity with reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) method.