Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) are present in the Blood of people suffering from most cancers, but because of their rarity their presence is very difficult to spot. A number of technologies have been developed in the past to capture and count CTCs (see flashbacks below), but they tend to still have a number of limitations. The main problem is*that because CTCs are so rare, a very large amount of Blood is required to have a chance of finding enough of the Cells to point toward a diagnosis.*Scientists at Stanford University have now developed their own unique approach for capturing CTCs that relies on magnets that work Directly inside Blood vessels, avoiding taking Blood samples altogether.
The method involves injecting special magnetic particles that are engineered to stick to Circulating Tumor cells. A flexible magnetic wire is inserted into a Blood vessel via an IV catheter and allowed to spend some time inside while Blood passes by. The magnetic particles swimming by the wire end up sticking to it, and if they have CTCs attached to them, those come along as well.
So far the technique has been tried on pigs and the researchers demonstrated that they were able to collect enough CTCs for diagnostics Within ten seconds. Moreover, the capture efficiency is 10 to 80 times greater than what can be achieved from a 5 milliliter Blood sample and up to thousands of times greater than what is possible with the*Gilupi CellCollector, an already commercially available in vivo CTC isolator.
07-18-2018, 11:56 PM
New Device Captures Circulating Tumor Cells Directly Within Blood Vessels
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