Lung cancers tend to develop rapidly, changing how they respond to medication in unexpected ways. This makes it hard to decide which treatments are most effective without trying them first, resulting in lost time and missed opportunities. Biopsies and CT scans are the most commonly used methods of evaluating whether a treatment is working. Biopsies are invasive and can only be done infrequently, while CT scans offer limited information and expose the patient to X-ray radiation.
A team headed by researchers from Stanford University have now developed a technique for capturing circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and performing molecular analysis on them to figure out how they are mutating in response to treatment. Since CTCs are sourced from the actual tumors, they carry with them essentially the same information that a biopsy can offer. Being able to isolate CTCs within a sample of blood provides a much less invasive “liquid biopsy” option that can be performed frequently without much trauma for the patient.
The technique starts by mixing in antibodies into a blood sample that attach to CTCs. Magnetic nanoparticles that grab onto the antibodies are added next. To pull the CTCs out from the blood, a magnetic device called a MagSifter is then used which deposits individual CTCs into tiny wells in preparation for genetic analysis.
Each such procedure would cost around $30 and provide results on mutations within a few hours. This is spectacularly better than costing thousands of dollars and having results only after a number of weeks for existing biopsy techniques.
Study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: Molecular profiling of single circulating tumor cells from lung cancer patients…
Via: Stanford…