Abstract

NanoVelcro Assays for Detection and Characterization of Circulating Tumor Cells

Hsian-Rong Tseng, Professor, University Of California-Los Angeles

Circulating tumor cell (CTC) is regarded as a liquid biopsy of tumor, allowing non-invasive, repetitive, and systemic sampling of disease. Although detecting and enumerating CTCs is of prognostic significance in metastatic cancer, it is conceivable that performing molecular and functional characterization on CTCs will reveal unprecedented insight into the pathogenic mechanisms driving lethal disease. Nanomaterial-embedded cancer diagnostic platforms, i.e., NanoVelcro CTC Assays represent a unique rare-cell sorting method that enables detection, isolation, and characterization of CTCs in peripheral blood, providing an opportunity to noninvasively monitor disease progression in individual cancer patients. Over the past decade, a series of NanoVelcro CTC Assays has been demonstrated for exploring the full potential of CTCs as a clinical biomarker, including CTC enumeration, phenotyping, genotyping and expression profiling. In this presentation, Professor Tseng will briefly introduce the development of multiple generations of NanoVelcro CTC Assays, and highlight the clinical applications of each generation for various types of solid tumors, including prostate cancer, pancreatic cancer, lung cancer, kidney cancer, liver cancer, and melanoma.  Prof. Tseng’s research team at UCLA is honored to contribute to the White House Cancer Moonshot program, in pursuit of accelerating blood profiling diagnostic technologies for the benefit of patient quality of life. Under Prof. Tseng’s leadership, his team has been seeking for research and clinical partners world-wide in order to further broaden the impact of  NanoVelcro CTC Assays.