Abstract

High Blood Volume Approaches to Improve CTC-based Liquid Biopsies

Nikolas Stoecklein, Professor, University Of Dusseldorf

The direct access to systemically spread cancer cells is the true potential of CTC-based liquid biopsies. However, the major obstacle to implement CTC-based liquid biopsies into clinical routine applications is the extreme low concentration of CTCs and the minimal amount of investigated blood in standard CTC-tests. To tackle this problem, we introduced Diagnostic Leukapheresis (DLA), which increased significantly CTC detection frequency and resulted in an escalation of CTC numbers. We hope that DLA, or similar approaches derived thereof, will advance the clinical utility of CTC-based liquid biopsies. Besides DLA, I will review some new alternative approaches also aiming to increase the investigated blood volume in my talk.