Higher Sensitivity and Specificity; Live Cell Capture; Faster Cell Sorting.

Competitive methods used to isolate CTCs rely on cell size, shape or, more recently, on attachment of antibodies against surface markers of tumor cells to a device’s surface. Markers specific to invasive tumor cells have not been well established. The result has been assays that lack sensitivity, are not directly linked to metastatic potential, and do not allow culture and study of live, invasive CTCs.

Applied DNA’s proprietary technology is able to overcome these obstacles by harnessing the very mechanism by which metastatic cells from tumors invade surrounding tissue, resulting in several advantages.

• Increases detection sensitivity by capturing iCTCs of different sizes and phenotypes
  Not biased to capture by particular physical or antibody markers
• Captures functional metastasis-initiating tumor cells
  Enables culture for in vitro drug sensitivity testing
  Makes possible development of cell line and animal metastasis models
• Enables single cell sorting by automated flow cytometry
  Automates iCTC counting by flow or imaging cytometry
  Makes possible accurately characterization of genotypes and drug targets using gene expression, mutation, PCR and NGS.