Circulating Tumor Cells Harvesting and Expansion

Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) are cancer cells that travel through the body via the bloodstream.  They are thought to have “broken free” from a solid tumor.  There is ongoing research to compare CTCs to primary tumor tissue, i.e., tumor tissue that has not yet entered the bloodstream.  Enumeration of CTCs can be used to track cancer progression.  For example, the FDA has approved the use of CTC monitoring to predict overall survival and progression-free survival of metastatic breast cancer and colorectal cancer patients.  Additionally, CTC count can be serially quantitated as a measure of treatment efficacy.

Biocytics™, through its incubation with CBI, has access to the CellSearch System™ (Veridex LLC, Warren, NJ http://www.veridex.com/ ), the only FDA-approved CTC isolation system.  This system uses ferrofluid-coated antibodies directed against EpCAM, a marker found on epithelial cells, to isolate epithelial cells from the blood.  Because the majority of solid tumors are epithelial-derived, an epithelial cell found in the bloodstream is likely to have come from a tumor.  Thus, this system provides an automated platform for detection and quantitation of CTCs that have entered the bloodstream and may be capable of forming tumors at distant sites within the body.  Biocytics™ is investigating how to expand CTCs in culture to be used for therapeutic and diagnostic purposes.