A Method for Isolating Tumor Cells from Large Volume of Malignant Pleural Effusion and Its Efficacy Evaluation

• Main Authors: Yanfei WANG, Zhen LIANG, Yong LIU, Furong KOU, Danfeng JIANG, Yanqun ZHENG, Wei LIU, Budong ZHU
• Format: Article
• Language: zho
• Published: Chinese Anti-Cancer Association; Chinese Antituberculosis Association 2020-12-01
• Series: Chinese Journal of Lung Cancer
• Subjects: pleural effusion; tumor cells isolation; cell separation media; gene mutation detection; next-generation sequencing
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.3779/j.issn.1009-3419.2020.103.18
• ISSN: 1009-3419; 1999-6187

Background and objective Malignant plural effusion (MPE) is one of the most common specimen for liquid biopsy gene detection. This study aims to explore a method for isolating tumor cells from large volume of MPE and evaluate its efficacy and application prospect in gene detection. Methods Pleural effusions (>500 mL) from 20 advanced lung cancer patients were obtained by effusion drainage and used to isolate tumor cells with cell separation media Percoll and Ficoll. Cell number and purity were calculated. DNA was extracted from the supernatant (etDNA), total cells and isolated tumor cells of pleural effusion (ETC-DNA) to detect the mutation of tumor-related genes by next-generation sequencing. Results The median number of cells isolated from malignant pleural effusion was 8.50×104 (interquel range: 9.25×103-3.75×105), 85.50%±5.80% of the cells were identified as tumor cells. The detection rates of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) gene mutation of etDNA, total cell DNA and ETC-DNA were 70.00%, 50.00% and 70.00%, reseparately, while the median EGFR mutation abundance in 3 components was 16.05% (4.78%-43.06%), 1.09% (0.00%-2.39%), and 33.02% (18.50%-76.70%), respectively. ETC-DNA had good consistency with tissue DNA (P>0.999, kappa=1.000) and etDNA (P>0.999, kappa=1.000). ETC-DNA inclined to have higher EGFR mutation than etDNA, but the result was not statistically significant. Conclusion Our method can isolate large amount of tumor cells from a large volume of malignant pleural effusion with high purity. Using ETC-DNA as specimen improves the efficacy of gene detection, thus is worth further study.