PATIENT INFORMATION: about maintrac
About Maintrac
Maintrac is an innovative analysis platform in cancer diagnostics and therapy monitoring. Using a simple blood test, Maintrac identifies and quantifies the circulating tumour cells in the blood sample of cancer patients and can analyse the efficacy of selected drugs. Until recently, it has been impossible to predict precisely how two people with the same type of cancer will respond to treatment. Through the analysis of Circulating Tumour Cells (CTCs/CETCs) it is now possible to provide health practitioners with information to help overcome this challenge.
The Maintrac CTC/CETC test allows for very close monitoring of cancer status. CTC/CETC counts can be used to track cancerous activity, and monitor whether there is an increased risk of a cancer coming back. This means that the patient and practitioner can work together to stop cancer in its tracks, long before it has the chance to grow again.
What are CTCs?
A growing tumour is made up of many different cancer cells. If a cancer is malignant, a select population of cancer cells can escape the tumour mass and invade the blood stream. When this happens, the cancer is at a turning point. Escapee cancer cells in the blood stream can travel to another site in the body and grow a second tumour at a later stage, called a metastasis. These escapee cancer cells in the blood are called Circulating Tumour Cells, abbreviated as ‘CTC/CETCs.'
Video: Circulating Tumour Cells
About Cancer, DNA, and Circulating Tumour Cells
From the time malignant tumours have reached a size of 1-2 mm, they release thousands of malignant cells into the circulation. Most of those die or get killed off. The more aggressive ones survive and remain in the circulation as CTC/CETCs. They have the potential to dispatch into a foreign site in the body in order to proliferate and create a ‘secondary cancer,’ also known as a ‘metastasis.’ Their ability to do this is unique to CTC/CETCs, i.e. the rest of the population of tumour cells is not able to do this.
Thus far, it has been impossible to predict how two people with the same type of cancer will respond to treatment. Through the analysis of CTC/CETCs it is possible to provide clinicians with information to help overcome this challenge. CTC/CETCs contain all the information for the establishment of a secondary cancer. Therefore, with the use of new molecular technology, it is now possible to determine the exact nature of a patient’s actively metastasising cancer cell population (CTC/CETCs).