Semiautomated isolation and molecular characterisation of single or highly purified tumour cells from CellSearch enriched blood samples using dielectrophoretic cell sorting

摘要

Background: Molecular characterisation of single circulating tumour cells (CTCs) holds considerable promise for predictive biomarker assessment and to explore CTC heterogeneity. We evaluate a new method, the DEPArray system, that allows the dielectrophoretic manipulation and isolation of single and 100% purified groups of CTCs from pre-enriched blood samples and explore the feasibility of their molecular characterisation.