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Cited by 2,441

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 7 of the 7 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Circulating Tumor Cell Clusters Are Oligoclonal Precursors of Breast Cancer Metastasis

Open access
Aceto, Nicola, Bardia, Aditya, Miyamoto, David T., Donaldson, Maria C., Wittner, Ben S., Spencer, Joel A., Yu, Min, Pely, Adam, Engstrom, Amanda, Zhu, Huili, Brannigan, Brian W., Kapur, Ravi, Stott, Shannon L., Shioda, Toshi, Ramaswamy, Sridhar, Ting, David T., Lin, Charles P., Toner, Mehmet, Haber, Daniel A., Maheswaran, Shyamala·2014·Cell

Abstract

SUMMARY Clusters of circulating tumor cells (CTC-clusters) are present in the blood of patients with cancer but their contribution to metastasis is not well defined. Using mouse models with tagged mammary tumors, we demonstrate that CTC-clusters arise from oligoclonal tumor cell groupings and not from intravascular aggregation events. Although rare in the circulation compared with single CTCs, CTC-clusters have 23-50-fold increased metastatic potential. In patients with breast cancer, single-cell resolution RNA sequencing of CTC-clusters and single CTCs, matched within individual blood samples, identifies the cell junction component plakoglobin as highly differentially expressed. In mouse models, knockdown of plakoglobin abrogates CTC-cluster formation and suppresses lung metastases. In breast cancer patients, both abundance of CTC-clusters and high tumor plakoglobin levels denote adverse outcomes. Thus, CTC-clusters are derived from multicellular groupings of primary tumor cells held together through plakoglobin-dependent intercellular adhesion, and while rare, they greatly contribute to the metastatic spread of cancer.

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Metadata

Authors
Aceto, N., Bardia, A., Miyamoto, D. T., Donaldson, M. C., Wittner, B. S., Spencer, J. A., Yu, M., Pely, A., Engstrom, A., Zhu, H., Brannigan, B. W., Kapur, R., Stott, S. L., Shioda, T., Ramaswamy, S., Ting, D. T., Lin, C. P., Toner, M., Haber, D. A., & Maheswaran, S.
Venue
Cell
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2014-08
Volume
158
Issue
5
Pages
1110-1122
ISSN
0092-8674 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W1993913242
Cited by
2,441
References
7
FWCI
70.23
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
bronze

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Circulating Tumor Cell Clusters Are Oligoclonal Precursors of Breast Cancer Metastasis. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1016/j.cell.2014.07.013
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Aceto, N., Bardia, A., Miyamoto, D. T., Donaldson, M. C., Wittner, B. S., Spencer, J. A., Yu, M., Pely, A., Engstrom, A., Zhu, H., Brannigan, B. W., Kapur, R., Stott, S. L., Shioda, T., Ramaswamy, S., Ting, D. T., Lin, C. P., Toner, M., Haber, D. A., & Maheswaran, S. (2014). Circulating Tumor Cell Clusters Are Oligoclonal Precursors of Breast Cancer Metastasis. Cell. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2014.07.013

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.