Device Captures Metastasis-Associated Circulating Tumor Cell Clusters
The latest version of a microfluidic device for capturing rare circulating tumor cells (CTCs) is the first designed specifically to capture clusters of two or more cells, rather than single cells. The new device, called the Cluster-Chip, was developed by the same Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) research team that created previous microchip-based devices. Recent studies by MGH investigators and others have suggested that CTC clusters are significantly more likely to cause metastases than single circulating tumor cells.
Transcript
00:00:04 We all know that cancer is a bad disease, but not many people know that cancer rarely kills because of the primary tumor. In 9 out of 10 cases, cancer kills because it spreads to the other parts of the body. This process that we call metasys, occurs by tumor cells that are shedding from primary tumor into bloodstream, circling in the body, then going and lodging at a distant site to start a new tumor. Which cells actually survive
00:00:36 and create a metasys, create a new tumor, is a very active area of research. So what we did, for the first time, a technology, a microchip technology, that goes and analyzes each individual blood cell at microscale, with a very high speed, 5 million cells per second, and looks for these CTC clusters. Our chip is unique that it doesn't really depend on the type of the cancer. It can capture these cells from virtually all types of cancer. When we started, we were expecting to get clusters of cancer cells, only the clusters of cancer cells.
00:01:15 But, a nice surprise, we also found tumor cells that are traveling with white blood cells attached to them, so they are technically clusters. So our chip captured them too. What this chip brings is, really, a way, for the first time, a way to study these clusters. Cancer immunotherapy is using immune system to combat cancer, is getting more and more attention. So this will be a very important advancement really for cancer immunotherapy too.