The CTC-chip: an exciting new tool to detect circulating tumor cells in lung cancer patients

Abstract

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are rare cells that originate from a malignancy and circulate freely in the peripheral blood. The ability to capture and study CTCs is an emerging field with implications for early detection, diagnosis, determining prognosis and monitoring of cancer, as well as for understanding the fundamental biology of the process of metastasis. Here, we review the development and initial clinical studies with a novel microfluidic platform for isolating these cells, the CTC-chip, and discuss its potential uses in the study of lung cancer.

FIGURE 1

Illustrative cartoon demonstrating a patient with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) donating a tube of peripheral blood which is then processed in the circulating tumor cell (CTC)-chip immediately, without any required preprocessing. CTCs are captured against the sides of the anti-Ep-CAM-coated posts (epithelial cell adhesion molecule), and then can be stained with fluorescently-labeled markers for enumeration or undergo genomic DNA extraction for epidermal growth factor receptor mutation or other molecular analysis.