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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2011 May 10.
Published in final edited form as: Nature. 2007 Dec 20;450(7173):1235–1239. doi: 10.1038/nature06385

Figure 3. Enumeration of CTCs from cancer patients.

Figure 3

a, Summary of samples and CTC counts per 1 ml of blood in patients with various advanced cancers and localized prostate cancer. b, Frequency of CTCs per 1 ml of blood, by diagnosis. The box plot presents the median, lower and upper quartiles (25th, 75th percentiles). Data points that lie outside the 10th and 90th percentiles are shown as outliers. c, Purity of captured CTCs (ratio of CTCs to total nucleated cells), by diagnosis. d–i, Serial CTC assessment. CTC quantity (red), and tumour size (blue) measured as the unidimensional sum of all significant tumour sites on a CT scan, are well correlated over the course of anti-cancer treatment for nine patients. Six of them are shown here, for whom diagnoses and specific therapies were: NSCLC, 1st-line carboplatin, paclitaxel (d); NSCLC, 2nd-line pemetrexed (e); colorectal, 1st-line 5FU, irinotecan (f); pancreatic, 1st-line gemcitabine, bevacizumab (g); pancreatic, 1st-line gemcitabine (h); pancreatic, 1st-line gemcitabine, erlotinib (i). Baseline CT scans were before therapy initiation and CTC measurements began at or shortly after the first treatment.