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Advancing Techniques and Insights in Circulating Tumor Cell (CTC) Research

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Ex Vivo Engineering of the Tumor Microenvironment

Part of the book series: Cancer Drug Discovery and Development ((CDD&D))

Abstract

Cancer is a major cause of mortality worldwide, with a disease burden estimated to grow over the coming decades. Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are rare cancer cells released from the primary or metastatic tumors and transported though the peripheral circulatory system to their specific secondary locations. The presence of CTCs in the a cancer patient’s blood has been used as a prognostic biomarker, with lower CTC count correlating with greater overall survival [1]. In spite of its clinical potential, the isolation and detection of CTCs has been a challenging task due to its rare presence amongst other blood cells (as low as 1–10 CTCs per billions of blood cells) and variability in terms of both morphological and biochemical markers. Recent developments of microfluidics technology have paved the way for better isolation and characterization of CTCs due to several advantages such as lower sample volume, higher sensitivity and throughput and lesser production cost [2, 3]. In this chapter, various CTC isolation devices are classified under two major categories: microfluidics and conventional macro-scale devices, as illustrated in Fig. 1. We will be discussing both label-free methods and antibody-dependent methods for CTC isolation, and will provide discussion and future perspectives on the advantages and drawbacks of both these techniques on potential clinical applications. Advancement in these technologies for CTCs and associated components, such as exosomes, led to an unraveling of tumor variation, ranging histology, molecular, proteomic and functional heterogeneity, which will be discussed in the subsequent sections.

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Acknowledgments

B.L.K. acknowledges support from the National Research Foundation (NRF), Prime Minister’s Office, Singapore, under CREATE, Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) BioSystems and Micromechanics (BioSyM) IRG and MBI. P.K.C. acknowledges the support from the Mechanobiology Institute (MBI) for the Graduate Scholarship. We thank Mr. Wong Chun Xi (MBInfo) for helping with the illustrations.

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. BioSystems and Micromechanics (BioSyM) IRG, Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) Centre, Singapore, Singapore

      Bee Luan Khoo

    2. Mechanobiology Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

      Parthiv Kant Chaudhuri

    3. Mechanobiology Institute, National University of Singapore, SINGAPORE and Department of Biomedical Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

      Chwee Teck Lim

    4. School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Australian Centre for NanoMedicine, Garvan Institute for Biomedical Research, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

      Majid Ebrahimi Warkiani

    5. School of Medical Sciences, Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia

      Majid Ebrahimi Warkiani

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    1. Bee Luan Khoo
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    3. Chwee Teck Lim
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    4. Majid Ebrahimi Warkiani
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    Correspondence to Majid Ebrahimi Warkiani .

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    Editors and Affiliations

    1. Department of Medical Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

      Amir R. Aref

    2. Department of Medical Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

      David Barbie

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    Khoo, B.L., Chaudhuri, P.K., Lim, C.T., Warkiani, M.E. (2017). Advancing Techniques and Insights in Circulating Tumor Cell (CTC) Research. In: Aref, A., Barbie, D. (eds) Ex Vivo Engineering of the Tumor Microenvironment. Cancer Drug Discovery and Development. Humana Press, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45397-2_5

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    • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45397-2_5

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