BACKGROUND:  For patients with solid cancers, the dissemination or spread of tumor cells to distant organs through both the blood and the lymphatic system signals a progression in disease that can often lead to serious complications. Consequently, the ability to detect these circulating tumor cells (CTCs) is critical, and would enable clinicians to assess disease progression, devise more informed treatment regimens, and monitor therapeutic outcomes. As a result, over the past few decades, CTCs have emerged as a critical biomarker for examining early-stage cancer metastases, predicting patient prognosis and monitoring therapeutic interventions and outcomes. The technical challenge of isolating CTCs from the blood however, is a huge obstacle due to their very limited number. In addition, current technologies face issues of low sensitivity and selectivity, leading to isolation of low yields of tumor cells at limited purities. As a result, the clinical utility of these technologies is questionable.

INNOVATION:  Researchers at UCLA have developed a novel cell capture system capable of effective isolation of viable CTCs from whole blood samples. Through use of various capture agents in combination with a nanopillar-coated substrate based technology, which was shown to enhance local topographic interactions with cells, researchers were able to dramatically improve cell capture capabilities. In addition to functional improvements, this system is also more user friendly, and takes advantage of a simple static cell culture platform, foregoing application of the complex fluidic handling systems common in currently used microfluidic based CTC capture systems. Overall, this technology is a vast improvement upon current CTC capture alternatives, and has the potential to serve as a point-of-care CTC diagnostic device.

POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS 

• Can be used in the detection of circulating tumor cells, for diagnosis of early stage metastatic cancers.
• Strong application in the diagnosis of diseases whose detection is based on cell capture via antigen/antibody recognition in blood and other bodily fluids.

ADVANTAGES

• This invention has a significantly increased cell capture yield relative to conventional capture devices.
• This system does away with complex fluidic handling devices, and achieves high cell-capture efficiency through incubation of samples on to static cell culture plates.
• Can be used in combination with a number of capture substrates, in order to target different types of cells.

DEVELOPMENT-TO-DATE:  This technology has been validated in vitro, and is currently being evaluated in a clinical setting.

Reference: UCLA Case No. 2009-520