A comprehensive description of the circulating tumor cell: BCKDHB.

The circulating tumor cell (CTC) is most likely responsible for effective metastasis (1-3). We measured total transcription in circulating tumor cells isolated from the blood of women with stage IV breast cancer to define at the molecular level the most significant changes that accompany dissemination in a migrating tumor cell population (4) and integrated these with transcriptomic study of the circulating tumor cell in humans with metastatic prostate cancer (5). We identify here BCKDHB as a differentially expressed target in the circulating tumor cell in humans with cancer.