Non-invasive lung adenocarcinoma could benefit from limited resection, nonetheless, there is a lack of method to determine preoperative tumour invasiveness. We aimed to investigate whether folate receptor-positive circulating tumour cells (FR⁺-CTCs) in combination with maximum tumour diameter (MTD) determines, before surgery, the invasiveness of small-sized, indeterminate solitary pulmonary nodules (SPNs).

A total of 382 patients with suspicious lung adenocarcinoma on computed tomography who were expected to undergo lung resection were enrolled in this study at three participating institutes and randomly assigned into training and validation cohorts. Before surgery, 3 mL peripheral blood was collected from all participants. FR⁺-CTCs were analyzed using immunomagnetic leukocyte depletion and quantitated by ligand-targeted PCR method. After surgery, the resected tissues were diagnosed by pathologists according to IASLC/ATS/ERS classification.

FR⁺-CTC levels in the peripheral blood can differentiate benign from malignant nodules with a sensitivity of 78·6%–82·7% and a specificity of 68·8%–78·4%. Both FR⁺-CTC and MTD are independent predictive indices of invasive tumours for lung adenocarcinoma ≤2 cm based on multivariate analyses. Further, FR⁺-CTC count in combination with MTD can differentiate non-invasive cancers from invasive cancers with a sensitivity of 63·6%–81·8% and a specificity of 71·4%–89·7%.

Detection of FR⁺-CTC is a reliable method to differentiate malignancy of indeterminate SPNs. Combining of FR⁺-CTC count and MTD could possibly enhance preoperative determination of the invasiveness of lung nodules and guide surgeons to select limited lung resection and avoid overtreatment for patients with non-invasive lesions.

None.