Micrometastasis in Gastrointestinal Cancer

Prognostic and predictive value of assessing the patients micrometastasis status in blood and bone marrow when diagnosed GI cancer. 2 different patient subgroups are currently studied, patients with cancer of the pancreas and patients with liver metastasis secondary to colorectal cancer.
Our hypothesis is that patients with detective circulating tumor cells in the blood or disseminated tumour cells in their bone marrow at diagnosis have a more advanced disease than negative patients. This information may be of therapeutic interest.