Elevated Levels of Circulating Endothelial Cells in Pregnancies Complicated by Pre-Eclampsia and/or Fetal Growth Restriction
This SMFM 2025 poster reports a RareCyte liquid-biopsy immunofluorescence assay that enumerates circulating endothelial cells (CECs) in maternal blood and finds CEC counts elevated in third-trimester pregnancies complicated by preeclampsia and/or fetal growth restriction relative to healthy pregnancies — preliminary support for CEC enumeration as a predictive biomarker of pregnancy complications.
Presented by RareCyte and Swedish Medical Center.
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- A four-parameter immunofluorescence assay on the RareCyte liquid-biopsy platform identifies circulating endothelial cells from a maternal blood sample. CECs are scored as nucleated, CD45-negative cells positive for either or both endothelial markers VE-cadherin (CD144) and MCAM (CD146); blood is prepared with the AccuCyte system and imaged on CyteFinder instruments.
- In HUVEC spike-in validation, the assay identified model CECs with 99.7% sensitivity and 99.9% specificity using CD144, and 99.3% sensitivity and 100% specificity using CD146. Each figure aggregates eight slides per spike-in experiment, with negative-control cell lines confirming marker specificity.
- Across a third-trimester clinical cohort, population CEC counts rose from 1.5 per mL of blood in non-pregnant controls to 5.0 in healthy pregnancies and 11.6 in complicated pregnancies, with counts elevated in both preeclampsia and fetal growth restriction relative to healthy third-trimester pregnancies. The exploratory cohort was small — 29 third-trimester pregnancies (10 uncomplicated, 7 FGR, 4 PE, 8 PE plus FGR) and 10 non-pregnant controls — and the authors present CEC enumeration as a candidate predictive biomarker warranting further study.
