Abstract

3D microdevice for the in vivo Trapping of Circulating Tumor Cells

Hélène Cayron, PhD student, LAAS-CNRS and Innopsys

Nowadays, current systems for circulating tumor cell (CTC) detection suffer from two major bottlenecks: in vitro enrichment from a few mL of blood induces a sampling bias given the rareness of CTCs in blood, and immune-detection techniques infer a selection bias given the important heterogeneity of these cells. To overcome these limitations, we developed a device combining in vivo and physical trapping of CTCs, benefiting from their characteristic size and rigidity. In practice, a polymeric 3D net-like microdevice is integrated onto an insertion guidewire to be introduced into the arm vein of a patient through a medical catheter. Using a fluidic platform reproducing in vivo conditions in terms of pressure and flow rate, we succeeded in capturing human prostate cancer cells from whole blood in just a few minutes, demonstrating the device's selectivity and sensitivity. The collected cells can then be retrieved for enumeration and analysis. We anticipate this device could be used for the early diagnosis of cancer and for personalized therapeutic follow-up in clinical routine. Its versatility should render it transposable to the capture of individual or clustered CTCs, derived from a variety of cancer types and, by extension, to other circulating cellular and molecular biomarkers.