Tumor isolation
Detection of circulating tumor cells
There is no available biomarker for detection of early cancer spreading (metastasis), thus there is a need for new and improved techniques for prognosis and treatment of cancer. In aggressive cancer disease, the tumor cells spread from the primary tumor to other sites in the body through the blood and lymph systems. These cells are called circulating tumor cells (CTCs).
The detection of CTCs in peripheral blood is associated with disease outcome in advanced metastatic stages of multiple solid tumors, including e.g. prostate, breast, lung and colon cancer. It can be used as a tool for disease monitoring and decision making for targeted therapy. However, CTC-isolation is challenging due to cell scarcity (among billions of blood cells there might be 1 CTC), variations in CTC cell size, morphology and antigen expression profile, as well as lack of any single universal marker specific for the detection and characterization of CTCs.
Acoustophoresis
Our approach to separate CTCs from white blood cells is using a label-free ultrasound standing wave-based microfluidics platform called Acoustophoresis (Magnusson et al 2017, Antfolk et al 2015, Augustsson et al 2012). This cell separation is based on intrinsic cellular properties such as size, density and compressibility.
The aim is to focus the CTCs to the center of the separation channel to be collected in a single central outlet, whereas the blood cells are discarded to the sides. After cell separation, the cells are labeled for specific antigens to identify the collected cancer cells. The project is currently conducting a pilot study on prostate cancer patients, where blood samples are collected and analyzed for the presence of CTCs using our acoustic CTC-setup.
References
Magnusson C. et al., Clinical-scale Cell-Surface-Marker Independent Acoustic Microfluidic Enrichment of Tumor Cells from Blood, Analytical Chemistry, 2017, 89(22), 11954-61.
Antfolk M. et al.,Acoustophoretic, Label-Free separation and simultaneous concentration of rare tumor cells from white blood cells, Analytical Chemistry, 2015, 87, 9322−9328
Burguillos MA et al., Microchannel acoustophoresis does not impact survival or function of microglia, leukocytes or tumor cells, PLoS One, 2013:8(5): e64233
Augustsson P. et al.,Microfluidic, label-free enrichment of prostate cancer cells in blood based on acoustophoresis, Analytical Chemistry, 2012, 84(18), 7954-62