Microflow devices can obtain clusters of circulating cancer cells

according to the American Cancer Society, cancer is exposed in one way or another, and unfortunately it will claim another
.6 million lives in the United States in
2019. Researchers from San Diego State University,
Called Tumor Gen MDx Inc.
, and
Sanford Burnham Prebys
Medical Exploration Institute is exploring a seemingly basic question: What's the cause of cancer?
The answer is that when tumors spread to other vital organs, about

percent of cancer deaths are due to metastasis. How does cancer metasse?after a thorough search of the scientific literature, the researchers realized that it was not a single cell, but a different cluster of cancer cells, which circulated and transferred to other organs.
As the team reported in
AIP Advances
, this raises questions about
-
If these cell groups are the "root cause of cancer," why isn't there more research devoted to better understanding circulating cancer cell populations?
“ The reason for this rare research activity is that it is extremely difficult to capture these extremely rare clusters of metastasis cancer cells from patients' blood samples," said
Peter Terete
, co-author and assistant professor of research at the Sanford Burnham Institute for Medical Discovery. "But we realized that if we were to understand the complex process of cancer metastasis, we needed to develop a tool to easily find these clusters."
To do this, the researchers first identified the basic requirements necessary to gather useful information from isolated cancer cell populations. It involves a large enough sample size to contain a significant number of cancer cell clusters (approximately
10
ml of whole blood) and the use of whole blood to preserve rare circulatory clusters. However, whole blood requires a channel coating procedure that reduces nonse specific binding properties to prevent biodeface. And the device channel size must have the appropriate size to accommodate single cells and cancer cell clusters of different diameters.
“ Our device channel design must produce microflow flow properties that are suitable for promoting cell capture through anti
bodies in the coating
channel
," explains
Teriete

. We have also developed a unique alginate water gel coating that can be easily modified with antibodies or other biom molecules. By linking bioengineering to materials science and basic cancer biology, we were able to develop a device and demonstrate that it could operate as required.
”
microflomatic devices in this group provide a new treatment strategy for anti-cancer metastasis. Capturing viable circulating cancer stem cell clusters directly from cancer patients is a new way to develop new anti-metastatic drug therapies.
“ The development of drugs, especially for distant metastasis, is severely limited by the lack of sufficient tools to easily access metastasis
cells that cause
transmission." "Our microfloma devices will provide cancer researchers with a real human cancer cell population, so they can begin to understand the key mechanisms involved in metastasis and develop effective drugs that can save more cancer patients' lives." （cyy123.com）