Related Experiment Video
Updated: Dec 25, 2025
Rapid Isolation of Viable Circulating Tumor Cells from Patient Blood Samples
Published on: June 15, 2012
Optimization of rVAR2-Based Isolation of Cancer Cells in Blood for Building a Robust Assay for Clinical Detection of
Nicolai T Sand1, Tobias B Petersen1, Sara R Bang-Christensen1,2
1Centre for Medical Parasitology at Department of Immunology and Microbiology, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen and Department of Infectious Diseases, Copenhagen University Hospital, 2200 Copenhagen, Denmark.
Abstract:
Early detection and monitoring of cancer progression is key to successful treatment. Therefore, much research is invested in developing technologies, enabling effective and valuable use of non-invasive liquid biopsies. This includes the detection and analysis of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from blood samples. Recombinant malaria protein VAR2CSA (rVAR2) binds a unique chondroitin sulfate modification present on the vast majority of cancers and thereby holds promise as a near-universal tumor cell-targeting reagent to isolate CTCs from complex blood samples. This study describes a technical approach for optimizing the coupling of rVAR2 to magnetic beads and the development of a CTC isolation platform targeting a range of different cancer cell lines. We investigate both direct and indirect approaches for rVAR2-mediated bead retrieval of cancer cells and conclude that an indirect capture approach is most effective for rVAR2-based cancer cell retrieval.
