Catherine Alix-Panabières, Director of the Laboratory of Rare Human Circulating Cells and Professor of Universities – Hospital Practitioner at Montpellier University Hospital, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Super excited to share our new publication in the high-impact Journal of Experimental and Clinical Cancer Research:
‘Liquid biopsy reveals the immune status and protein profiles linked to CTC burden and clinical outcomes in metastatic breast cancer.’
Good reading!
For a long time, the role of the immune system in cancer progression has been underappreciated. This study brings it back to the center.
We show that Liquid Biopsy can go far beyond tumor-derived markers alone.
In metastatic breast cancer, the systemic landscape matters:
- Immune cell composition
- Immune checkpoint expression on circulating immune cells
- Circulating protein signatures alongside tumor-derived signals such as CTCs and CTC-PD-L1!
Using a multilayered liquid biopsy approach combining CTCs, immune profiling, and plasma proteomics, we reveal a dynamic and clinically relevant picture of metastatic disease biology.
These findings highlight liquid biopsy as a real-time window into both tumor-driven and host immune mechanisms that together shape disease progression and patient outcomes.
This work reinforces an important shift: understanding metastasis requires integrating both the tumor and the immune system – not treating them as separate worlds.
A huge thank you to all co-authors for their commitment and to the patients who generously donated blood samples. This study would not exist without them.”
Title: Liquid biopsy reveals the immune status and protein profiles linked to CTC burden and clinical outcomes in metastatic breast cancer
Authors: Keerthi Kurma, Thomas Bardol, Caroline Mollevi, Zahra Eslami-S, Françoise Garima, Marie Alexandre, Angélique Bobrie, Gerald Lossaint, Blandine Massemin, Véronique D’Hondt, Séverine Guiu, Laure Cayrefourcq, William Jacot, Catherine Alix-Panabières
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