Circulating
tumor cells (CTCs) have been considered as a potential
biomarker for evaluation of cancer metastasis and prognosis, especially
in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, the isolation and detection
of rare CTCs in HCC patients face enormous challenges due to omittance
and nonspecific binding. We previously designed a small molecular
NIR fluoresent agent, named MLP, which had high affinity with a tumor
cell-overexpressed enzyme, aminopeptidase N (APN). Based on that,
in this work we introduced a novel strategy via coassembling the antiepithelial
cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM) antibody and MLPinto theFe3O4 magnetic nanobeads (MB-MLP-EpCAM) to isolate and identify
HCC-CTCs coinstantaneously. MB-MLP-EpCAM significantly improved the
CTC-capture efficiency (>85%) without sacrificing cell viability
(>90%).
Most importantly, the advantages of precise dual-targetability, high
resolution of fluorescence imaging, and prominent selectivity make
our nanoplatform have great potential to achieve in vivo real-time identification and monitoring of CTCs clinically.
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