Retracing Circulating Tumour Cells for Biomarker Characterization after Enumeration

Area of Science:

• Oncology
• Biotechnology
• Medical Diagnostics

Background:

• Individual circulating tumor cell (CTC) analysis is crucial for personalized metastatic cancer therapy, especially when metastasis biopsy is challenging.
• Biomarker characterization of CTCs aids in understanding cancer progression and tailoring treatments.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a novel disc-based platform for mapping and retracing individual CTCs.
• To demonstrate the feasibility of downstream biomarker analysis on individually mapped CTCs.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a novel disc format with the CytoTrack platform to map and retrace individual CTCs from breast cancer patients and nucleated cells from healthy donors.
• Performed HER2 immunofluorescence characterization on mapped CTCs for proof of concept.

Main Results:

• Successfully detected and enumerated CTCs in three out of four breast cancer patient samples, with precise mapping on discs.
• Achieved high recovery rates (96.6%±8.5%) for retracing nucleated cells on discs, with minimal field of view shift (4-29 μm).
• Demonstrated successful HER2 characterization and retracing of CTCs from a HER2-positive patient, confirming downstream analysis capability.

Conclusions:

• The developed mapping and retracing technology allows for downstream analysis of individual CTCs for various cancer biomarkers.
• This novel approach holds significant potential for advancing personalized cancer therapy through detailed CTC analysis.
• Future research will further explore the capabilities of this retracing technology for biomarker discovery.