Abstract

Redefining Circulating Tumor Cells and Enabling Liquid Biopsy. Biological and Clinical Advances Arising from the Merger of the CELLSEARCH® and DEPArray™ Technologies

Steven Gross, Head of CellSearch Assay Development, Menarini Silicon Biosystems, Inc.

The prognostic power of Circulating Tumor Cells (CTC) measured using CELLSEARCH®, is arguably the most reproducible and independently verified finding in the field of CTC analysis. Evidence of different CTC populations with different clinical implications will be presented. The recent purchase of CellSearch by Menarini Silicon Biosystems serves to combine two of the most powerful automated cellular analysis platforms in the field of liquid biopsy. This combination is shedding new light on tumor heterogeneity, and its monitoring, using blood samples. It has also enabled purification of tumor cells from tissue samples of low tumor cellularity to enable CNV and NGS analysis on samples previously impossible to study. This could lead to faster outcome studies through use of banked FFPE tissue. The use of DEPArray to do complete molecular analysis on individual, or populations, of CTCs with 100% purity is now giving rise to unprecedented understanding of CTC heterogeneity, emerging CTC phenotypes, and exciting new prospects for researchers and clinicians.