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Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in women, and metastases from the breast to other areas of the body are the leading cause of death in these patients. Detection of circulating cancer cells (CTCs) in the bloodstream could help doctors find and treat metastases at an early stage, increasing the chances of survival. Now, the researchers who report DHW sensors developed a method that could more sensitively detect CTCs in the complex blood environment.
CTCs are cancer cells that are released from a primary tumor into the bloodstream, where they can travel to other sites and possibly establish new tumors. Measuring CTCs could help doctors determine a patient’s prognosis and best course of treatment, but these cancer cells are very rare compared to other blood cells, making them difficult to detect. Although some technologies have been developed to identify CTCs in blood, they suffer from limited sensitivity and specificity. Therefore, Zai-Sheng Wu and colleagues wanted to find a way to enhance a fluorescent signal for CTCs so that they could be more easily identified.
To develop their method, the researchers chose a breast cancer cell line that, like many breast cancers, produces large amounts of two proteins, ErbB-2 and EpCAM. They isolated breast cancer cells from a buffer solution with magnetic beads attached to antibodies to ErbB-2. Then, they added a DNA strand that contained multiple copies of a single-stranded DNA sequence, called the aptamer, which EpCAM recognizes. The strand also carried short sequences of DNA that could be used to perform an enzymatic amplification reaction to create many new copies that could bind to fluorescent probes. Using fluorescence spectrometry, only nine breast cancer cells could be detected in 200 μL of buffer solution. When the team added breast cancer cells to whole blood, they observed a fluorescent signal similar to that of the swab, suggesting that the test could be a powerful tool for screening for rare CTCs in real samples.
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Materials provided by American Chemical Society. Note: The content can be changed by style and length.
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