The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering within NIH is funding research at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center to help researchers create a monitoring device devoted to Circulating Tumor Cells (CTC).
CTCs as they travel through the blood can play an important role in early diagnosis, characterization of cancer subtypes, treatment monitoring, and metastasis. By measuring a patient’s CTC levels over time, clinicians can quickly determine if a particular cancer treatment is working.
There are many potential benefits of CTCs but with only one CTC for every one billion blood cells, finding any CTCs at all presents challenges. In addition, researchers have previously developed devices that could reliably sort CTCs from other types of cells in whole blood, but the CTCs could not be easily retrieved for further testing.
So far, the only FDA-cleared commercially available device for capturing CTCs is called the CELLSEARCH® system developed by Veridex, a subsidiary of Johnson and Johnson that relies on magnetic nanoparticles. The problem is that the system can’t always find CTCs when very few CTCs are present.
Today, researchers are working to develop their newest cancer lab-on-a-chip or referred to as (CTC-iChip) that will enable scientists to do high-speed automated sorting of rare cells that can be applied to almost any type of cancer. The CTC-iChip is the third microchip-based device developed for capturing CTCs.
According to an article that was published in “Science Translational Medicine” in April 2013, it has been found that the CTC-iChip is able to sort CTCs from whole blood quicker, more efficiently, and more effectively than previously developed microfluidic devices. The CTC-iChip might also be able to help clinicians identify important genetic differences between individual CTCs to help determine which targeted therapies are indicated.
According to researchers at MGH, the CTC-iChip designed for mass manufacturing provides a first class device for achieving high efficiency and high speed tumor cell sorting from a clinically relevant blood volume.
The CTC-iChip is not a complete substitute for current cancer care, however, the CTC-iChip could someday make monitoring and treating cancer more personalized. In the long run, it will enable a physician to treat the right patient with the right drug, at the right dose, at the right time.
For more information, go to www.nibib.nih.gov.