ABCB5 and metastatic neoplasm: Interestingly, all the 7 patients with detected PAX3, ABCB5 or MLANA transcripts by RT-PCR had metastatic disease in distant organs (stage M1c) and two of three cases with brain metastases had CTC fractions positive by RT-PCR, for MLANA and PAX3. Furthermore, four of the patients with detected melanoma-specific transcripts had CTC counts higher than 155 CTCs per 8 mL of blood; whilst the remaining three had from 1 to 11 CTCs per 8 mL of blood, detected by flow cytometry before slanted enrichment.