Circulating Tumor Cell Enrichment and Single-Cell Isolation Combining the CellSearch® and DEPArray™ Systems

Cäcilia Köstler; Bernhard Polzer; Barbara Alberter

doi:10.1007/978-1-0716-3621-3_2

Circulating Tumor Cell Enrichment and Single-Cell Isolation Combining the CellSearch^® and DEPArray™ Systems

Methods Mol Biol. 2024:2752:11-42. doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-3621-3_2.

Authors

Cäcilia Köstler¹, Bernhard Polzer², Barbara Alberter²

Affiliations

¹ Cellular and Molecular Diagnostics Group, Division of Personalized Cancer Therapy, Fraunhofer Institute of Toxicology and Experimental Medicine ITEM-R, Regensburg, Germany. caecilia.koestler@item.fraunhofer.de.
² Cellular and Molecular Diagnostics Group, Division of Personalized Cancer Therapy, Fraunhofer Institute of Toxicology and Experimental Medicine ITEM-R, Regensburg, Germany.

PMID: 38194025
DOI: 10.1007/978-1-0716-3621-3_2

Abstract

The analysis of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) has shown potential for detection of cancer spread, prognosis, therapeutic target selection, and monitoring of treatment response. CTCs can be obtained repeatedly by simple blood draws as so-called "liquid biopsy." Thus, they can serve as a surrogate material for primary or metastatic tissue biopsies. In addition, isolation of CTCs provides the possibility to investigate those cells which may hold the (molecular) traits responsible for metastatic progression and ultimately patient death. As such, CTCs represent a target of utmost importance in cancer research and therapy. In this chapter, we describe a workflow for the enrichment of CTCs with the FDA-cleared CellSearch^® system followed by the isolation of single CTCs using the DEPArray™ technology enabling further molecular single-cell analyses.

Keywords: CTC; CellSearch; DEPArray; Dielectrophoresis; Liquid biopsy; Single-cell isolation.

MeSH terms

Biopsy
Cell Separation
Humans
Liquid Biopsy
Neoplastic Cells, Circulating*
Phenotype