Beyond the Capture of Circulating Tumor Cells: Next‐Generation Devices and Materials

Abstract

Over the last decade, significant progress has been made towards the development of approaches that enable the capture of rare circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from the blood of cancer patients, a critical capability for noninvasive tumor profiling. These advances have leveraged new insights in materials chemistry and microfluidics and allowed the capture and enumeration of CTCs with unprecedented sensitivity. However, it has become increasingly clear that simply capturing and counting tumor cells launched into the bloodstream may not provide the information needed to advance our understanding of the biology of these rare cells, or to allow us to better exploit them in medicine. A variety of advances have now emerged demonstrating that more information can be extracted from CTCs with next-generation devices and materials featuring tailored physical and chemical properties. In this Minireview, the last ten years of work in this area will be discussed, with an emphasis on the groundbreaking work of the last five years, during which the focus has moved beyond the simple capture of CTCs and gravitated towards approaches that enable in-depth analysis.

Tumor Cell Detection by Mass Spectrometry Using Signal Ion Emission Reactive Release Amplification

“…The result is a final amplification factor of 2.4x10 10 mass labels per cell. This amplification is in agreement with the theoretical amplification of 2.3x10 10 . A detailed discussion of how this was calculated is given in the SI.…”

“…6 They could hasten cancer detection, as dissemination of tumor cells from tissue is usually undetected with conventional histopathology and imaging technologies. 3,5,[7][8][9][10] Detection and characterization of CTCs still presents analytical challenges. In fact, CTCs are extremely rare and need to be isolated and detected from a complex biological matrix containing 10 9 hematological cells per milliliter.…”

Removal of Cells from Body Fluids by Magnetic Separation in Batch and Continuous Mode: Influence of Bead Size, Concentration, and Contact Time

“…14 In the same report, they also have demonstrated promising separation efficiencies of tumor cells using 30-nm iron oxide beads in a batch type setting. The removal of tumor cells from body fluid holds some promise 15 and various studies have been conducted on the isolation of circulating tumor cells (CTCs). 1−3,16−20 For example, McDonald and colleagues have demonstrated in an early study that ovarian cancer progression in mice is 10-fold lower when migratory tumor cells are removed by magnetic filtration from intraperitoneal fluids.…”

Near-Infrared Light-Responsive Hydrogel for Specific Recognition and Photothermal Site-Release of Circulating Tumor Cells

“…[1][2][3][4][5] So far, a considerable number of techniques such as microfluidic chips, 1,6-8 immunomagnetic separation, [9][10][11] and CTCs filters 12,13 have been developed for CTC isolation and enrichment. With the in-depth CTC studies and the development of detection techniques, some comprehensive and multifunction systems have been further investigated, which focus on not only capture of CTCs from patient, but also subsequent analysis and culture.…”