Circulating tumor cells: clinically relevant molecular access based on a novel CTC flow cell

Contemporary cancer diagnostics are becoming increasing reliant upon sophisticated new molecular methods for analyzing genetic information. Limiting the scope of these new technologies is the lack of adequate solid tumor tissue samples. Patients may present with tumors that are not accessible to biopsy or adequate for longitudinal monitoring. One attractive alternate source is cancer cells in the peripheral blood. These rare circulating tumor cells (CTC) require enrichment and isolation before molecular analysis can be performed. Current CTC platforms lack either the throughput or reliability to use in a clinical setting or they provide CTC samples at purities that restrict molecular access by limiting the molecular tools available. Recent advances in magetophoresis and microfluidics have been employed to produce an automated platform called LiquidBiopsy®. This platform uses high throughput sheath flow microfluidics for the positive selection of CTC populations. Furthermore the platform quantitatively isolates cells useful for molecular methods such as detection of mutations. CTC recovery was characterized and validated with an accuracy (