HIGH RECOVERY RATE AND HIGH PURITY ENRICHMENT OF CIRCULATING TUMOR CELLS

Project Summary Abstract Circulating tumor cellsCTCsare cancer cells that are detached from primary solid tumors and carried through the vasculature to potentially seed distant site metastases in vital organsthe main cause of death by cancerSingle cell molecular characterizations and analyses of CTCs not only could benefit basic cancer researchbut also might eventually lead to a more effective cancer treatmentHoweverone major limitation of CTCs in cancer research and its clinical applications has been the limited availability of viable CTCs for investigationsdue in part to the small patient blood volumes that are allowable for researchwhich usually yielded typical less thanCTCs frommL of whole bloodCurrent devicesincluding both label based and label free ones had their limitationsOur goal is to develop a microfluidic technology that combines both label based and label free methods to enrich CTCs based on size and biomarkers to achieve high purity and high recovery rate simultaneouslyThe objective of this application is to develop an integrated ferrohydrodynamic cell separationiFCSmethod that is tumor cell antigen independent and cell size size inclusiveand allows for depletion of WBCs and enrichment of CTCs regardless of tumor antigen and cell sizesresulting in comprehensive recovery of intact CTCs with minimal WBC contamination that are suitable for phenotypic analysisAimWe aim to further develop integrated ferrohydrodynamic cell separationiFCSmethod for tumor antigen independent and cell size inclusive enrichment of clinical CTCswith a goal of enriching the entire repertoire of intact CTCs with minimal WBC contaminationAimWe aim to validate iFCS withbreast cancer patient samples for its goal of enriching the entire repertoire of intact CTCs with minimal WBC contaminationProject Narrative We aim to develop an innovative and capable device for cancer research community to enable isolation and interrogation of circulating tumor cellsCTCsand transform basic science experimentation using CTCsThis technology will isolate CTCs from cancer patient blood at clinical relevant throughputwith andgtrecovery of intact cancer cells and low white blood cellsWBCscontaminationwhich can then be used in downstream analysesIn the long runthis technology could be used to show the comprehensive repertoire of CTCs and how they vary among cancer patients of different stages