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

Abstract

Isolation of single circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from patients is a very challenging technique that may promote the process of individualized antitumor therapies. However, there exist few systems capable of highly efficient capture and release of single CTCs with high viability for downstream analysis and culture. Herein, we designed a near-infrared (NIR) light-responsive substrate for highly efficient immunocapture and biocompatible site-release of CTCs by a combination of the photothermal effect of gold nanorods (GNRs) and a thermoresponsive hydrogel. The substrate was fabricated by imprinting target cancer cells on a GNR-pre-embedded gelatin hydrogel. Micro/nanostructures generated by cell imprinting produce artificial receptors for cancer cells to improve capture efficiency. Temperature-responsive gelatin dissolves rapidly at 37 °C; this allows bulk recovery of captured CTCs at physiological temperature or site-specific release of single CTCs by NIR-mediated photothermal activation of embedded GNRs. Furthermore, the system has been applied to capture, individually release, and genetically analyze CTCs from the whole blood of cancer patients. The multifunctional NIR-responsive platform demonstrates excellent performance in capture and site-release of CTCs with high viability, which provides a robust and versatile means toward individualized antitumor therapies and also shows promising potential for dynamically manipulating cell-substrate interactions in vitro.

Current detection technologies for circulating tumor cells

“…47 Lv et al designed a near-infrared (NIR) light-responsive substrate for highly efficient immune-capture and biocompatible site-release of CTCs. 48 …”

A Smart Responsive Dual Aptamers‐Targeted Bubble‐Generating Nanosystem for Cancer Triplex Therapy and Ultrasound Imaging

“…Local heating is often difficult to achieve in clinical applications, so gold nanoshells (AuNSs) were used to produce heat under 808 nm laser irradiation to induce the decomposition of TSLs in the work. There are some reports about gold nanostructures, including nanoshells, nanorods, nanocages, gold nanostars, etc., that have exhibited good photothermal therapy (PTT) effect. Thus, the photothermal conversion properties of AuNSs can be utilized for cancer treatment.…”

Antibody‐Free Hydrogel with the Synergistic Effect of Cell Imprinting and Boronate Affinity: Toward the Selective Capture and Release of Undamaged Circulating Tumor Cells

“…As shown in Figure a, PBA‐CIH showed the highest capture efficiency for the SMMC‐7721 cells, with cells ranging from 100 to 100 000, while the PBA‐NIH showed the lowest, which indicated that cell imprinting played a more significant role in the recognition of the SMMC‐7721 cells, and the boronate affinity improved the binding efficiency of the cell imprinting. Therefore, the capture efficiency could be further improved to 90.3 ± 1.4% with 1 × 10 5 SMMC‐7721 cells incubated on a 4.5 cm 2 PBA‐CIH because of the synergistic effect of the PBA‐CIH, making the capture efficiency comparable to that of antibody‐assisted substrates . Even when the number of cells was reduced to 100 cells, the capture efficiency of the PBA‐CIH reached 68.3 ± 4.1% ( n = 3), which proved the superiority of the synergistic effect of the spindle microinterfaces and molecular recognition for the selective capture of the rare tumor cells.…”