Highly specific and sensitive point-of-care detection of rare circulating tumor cells in whole blood via a dual recognition strategy

Publication date: 15 October 2019Source: Biosensors and Bioelectronics, Volume 143Author(s): Jianmei Yang, Xiaotong Huang, Chunfang Gan, Ruo Yuan, Yun XiangAbstractDespite the fact that the identification and detection of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) plays a critical role in cancer monitoring and diagnosis, it remains a major challenge to isolate and detect these cells, due to their extreme scarcity in peripheral blood. In this work, by coupling a dual recognition strategy and the commercial personal glucose meter, we established a point-of-care approach for detecting rare CTCs in whole blood with high sensitivity and selectivity. The antibody-conjugated magnetic beads lead to the capture and isolation of the CTCs while the enzyme- and second antibody-modified microspheres yield the signal for detection. Because of the dual recognition format, the developed method is highly selective, and a low detection limit of 7 cells can be realized as well, owing to the great signal amplification through the enzyme-loaded microbead labels. More importantly, the detection of CTCs in whole blood can be achieved in a point-of-care fashion with the using of the glucose meter transducer, offering our method a convenient and attractive alternative to traditional biopsy for the diagnosis of various cancers.
Source: Biosensors and Bioelectronics - Category: Biotechnology Source Type: research