Abstract

Liquid Biopsy Using the Nanotube-CTC-Chip

Balaji Panchapakesan, Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI)

In the recent past, we reported the nanotube-CTC-chip for rapid classification of biomarkers using electrical signals and cell capture from droplets with 55-100% yield. In this talk, we will outline the further development of the nanotube-CTC-chip for highly efficient capture of CTCs with very high quality.  Advantages of the nanotube-CTC-chip include both positive and negative selection strategy on the same chip resulting in potential to capture invasive CTC phenotypes with diverse population of cells. The nanotube-CTC-chip also enables culturing of cancer cells directly on the device for further analysis. Potentially one can achieve capture of CTCs based on multiple biomarkers, negative selection by depleting leukocytes, and density gradient based selection of nucleated cells, thereby avoiding loss of CTCs due to variation in size and biomarker composition in a single blood test.