Towards an optimal and unbiased approach for tumor cell isolation

Our current understanding of clinical significance or the lack thereof of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) is biased by the technology used to isolate these rare cells. Despite the presence of a vast number of academic and commercial technologies, the lack of a standardized and optimized platform has been widely noted. We present a negative enrichment approach, integrating WBC depletion and chemical-free RBC depletion in the same setup without the need for centrifugation, washing or multiple sample handling steps. This approach achieves an average of >90 % recovery of spiked tumor cells and >99 % total WBC depletion in whole blood across multiple cell lines, in a simple and easy-to-use assay. The results presented herein and ongoing improvements aim to fulfill the need for a highly reliable, unbiased, standardized, and optimized CTC isolation platform, using component technologies that are validated for cell isolation.