Abstract

Profile CTC Stiffness by Mechanical Separation Chips to Better Predict Breast Cancer Metastasis

Lidong Qin, Professor/CPRIT Scholar, Houston Methodist Research Institute

Detection of Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) has emerged as a promising minimally invasive prognostic tool to stage cancer metastasis; however, the identification and characterization of CTCs require extremely sensitive and specialized analytical methods, as CTCs are rare, heterogeneous, and associated with a complexity of blood sample matrix. To combat the current CTC detection limitations, we plan to incorporate the filtration method based on a size exclusion capability of microfluidics chips with cocktails of biomarker-specific antibodies to stain and image CTCs. By observing the cell distribution on the chip based on CTCs’ capability in crossing micro-barrier arrays, we can profile the captured CTCs’ stiffness and correlate it to the cancer metastasis potential. We expect to provide a better cancer prognosis tool than counting cells.