Efficient Isolation and In Situ Identification of Viable Circulating Tumor Cells Using Dual-Responsive...

Detecting circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from the peripheral blood of cancer patients is a promising approach for diagnosing early-stage cancers, monitoring disease progression, and prescribing personalized anticancer therapy. However, it is still challenging to achieve effective and cell-friendly isolation of CTCs due to their scarcity, heterogeneity, and vulnerability. Herein, a novel multifunctional platform based on fluorescent-magnetic Fe₃O₄/Rhm B@ZIF-8-pTA nanoparticles (FR@Z-pTA NPs) is developed for efficient CTCs isolation. FR@Z-pTA NPs not only capture more than 88% of rare cancer cells for both EpCAM-positive cells (MCF-7, HepG2) and EpCAM-negative cells (MDA-MB-231, HeLa) but also effectively release the captured cells with high efficiency (>80%) and viabilities (>90%) under cell-friendly pH/ATP stimuli. More importantly, FR@Z-pTA NPs exhibit excellent resistance to nonspecific adhesion of white blood cells (WBCs) and high detection sensitivity toward cancer cells in the patients' blood. The present multifunctional CTCs detection platform integrating high sensitivity, broad-spectrum capture, in situ fluorescent identification and cell-friendly release offers a good solution to address current challenges of CTCs isolation from clinical blood samples.