Detection of circulating tumor cells in cholangiocarcinoma via epithelial-mesenchymal transition markers and their application.

The aim of this study was to detect circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the peripheral blood of patients with cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) using a CTCs sorting technique and to assess the association between CTC counts and patient prognosis. Epithelial-type CTCs and mesenchymal-type CTCs (VCTC) were captured in the blood of 149 patients with CCA, and clinical data were collected for statistical analysis. Both the number of CTCs and the number of VCTC in patients with CCA were significantly correlated with tumor size, bile duct invasion, biliary hyperplasia, clinical stage, distal metastasis, and lymph node metastasis (p < 0.05). After the number of CCA metastasis, the number of VCTC was significantly higher (p < 0.001), survival time became shorter (p < 0.001), and disease-free survival was significantly lower (p < 0.05). VCTC can better reflect the metastatic status of CCA tumors, which helps to dynamically monitor patients' disease development and recurrence of metastasis.