Table 1.
Demographic characteristics of patients.
Table 2.
Results of staining HepG2 cells healthy blood with the different antibodies followed by measurement using flow cytometry.
Fig 1.
An exemplary picture of HepG2 cells exhibiting larger nuclei (DAPI) in tumor cells than in leukocytes and membrane staining of Anti-ASGPR-1-PE, Anti-CD146-APC, Anti-CD274-BV421 (merge).
Leukocytes were stained with Anti-CD45-FITC. 40x magnification (A), 20x magnification (B). Scale 20 μm.
Fig 2.
Flow cytometry gating strategy to identify the CTCs.
FSC-A versus FSC-H and SSC-W versus SSC-H were used to eliminate cell doublets and other aggregates. Positive events (CD45neg, CD146high & ASGPRhigh) were further gated for findings of CD274 (not shown).
Table 3.
Clinical course: Follow up to 2.2 years after treatment.
Fig 3.
The level of CTCs per mL of blood before and after treatments (combined) according to clinical-pathological characteristics of the liver cancer patients’ cohort.
Values and error bars represent the averages and SDs of CTC counts from patients with HCC. Significant, p <0.05.
Fig 4.
Early dynamic changes in CTCs following interventional radiological treatment in HCC-patients (A) Number of CTCs per mL of blood before and after MWA in n = 10 HCC-patients. Values and error bars represent the averages and SDs of CTC counts from n = 10 MWA-patients with HCC. Significant, p <0.05. (B) Short-term dynamic of CTCs before and after MWA in 10 HCC patients. In 3 patients who received MWA no CTCs were detected either before nor after treatment. (C) Number of CTCs per mL of blood before and after C-TACE in n = 7 HCC-patients. Values and error bars represent the averages and SDs of CTC counts from n = 7 C-TACE-patients with HCC. (D) Short-term dynamic of CTCs before and after C-TACE in 7 HCC patients. In one patient who received C-TACE no CTCs were detected neither before nor after treatment.
Fig 5.
Kaplan-Meier analysis of time to first local recurrence following the treatments by using MWA versus C-TACE.