Related Experiment Video
Updated: Apr 3, 2026
Microfluidics-based High-throughput Circulating Tumor Cell Sorting and Single-cell Sequencing Technology
Published on: November 14, 2025
Optimization and Evaluation of a Novel Size Based Circulating Tumor Cell Isolation System
Lei Xu1, Xueying Mao2, Ahmet Imrali2
1Centre for Molecular Oncology, Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London, London, United Kingdom; Department of Urology, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
Optimized Parsortix system efficiently isolates circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from blood, improving purity and yield compared to other methods. A novel fixation technique preserves cells for analysis, enabling detection of CTCs with epithelial and mesenchymal traits in prostate cancer patients.
Area of Science:
- Oncology
- Biotechnology
- Cell Biology
Background:
- Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are crucial biomarkers for non-invasive cancer monitoring.
- Existing CTC isolation technologies face challenges in efficiency, speed, and cell preservation.
- The Parsortix system offers an epitope-independent, size- and compressibility-based approach for CTC isolation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To optimize the Parsortix system for enhanced CTC isolation speed and sample volume.
- To develop a novel cell transfer and fixation method to improve cell retention on slides.
- To evaluate the Parsortix system's performance in isolating CTCs from prostate cancer patients compared to established methods.
Main Methods:
- Optimization of the Parsortix system for speed and sample volume.
- Development of a novel cell transfer and fixation technique for immunofluorescence.
- Comparative analysis of Parsortix against IsoFlux and CellSearch for CTC isolation in prostate cancer patients.
- Characterization of CTCs using four-color immunofluorescence to assess epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT).
Main Results:
- The optimized Parsortix system captured over 50% of spiked cancer cell lines.
- The novel fixation method retained >90% of cells on slides without compromising signal.
- Parsortix harvested a similar number of cytokeratin-positive CTCs as IsoFlux but with significantly higher purity (3.1% vs 1.0%).
- Parsortix isolated significantly more CK-positive CTCs than CellSearch.
- Parsortix captured CTC clusters and cells exhibiting both epithelial and mesenchymal markers (EMT) in prostate cancer patients.
Conclusions:
- The optimized Parsortix system, coupled with the novel fixation method, provides an efficient and high-purity platform for CTC isolation.
- This technology enables the detection of CTCs with diverse phenotypes, including those undergoing EMT.
- Parsortix demonstrates superior performance compared to CellSearch and comparable performance to IsoFlux in CTC enumeration, with enhanced purity.
