Circulating Tumor Cell Isolation

Early cancer detection and personalized therapy have proven vital for patient diagnostics, prognostic, and long-term survival. Identifying and characterizing tumor cells provide critical information to diagnose, monitor, and potentially interfere with the metastatic process. A solid tumor biopsy, established as a standard clinical application, is invasive, expensive, time-consuming, and often perplexed by tumor heterogeneity. Liquid biopsies are relatively non-invasive and can be collected and tested repeatedly, with the testing including the latest DNA and RNA sequencing analyses. CTCs could even provide global information on metastatic risk, disease progression, and treatment effectiveness.

Despite their potential role in cancer patient healthcare, CTC-based liquid biopsy has not found its way into diagnostic practice. The challenges of CTCs are their rarity and potential sensitivity to perturbance of sample manipulations. To harness the power of CTC information, BioFluidica has designed and engineered a microfluidic-based platform integrated with immunochemistry and automation to isolate and enrich CTCs from whole blood samples. LiquidScan CTC enrichment requires no blood pre-treatment, and the design of the microfluidic chip ensures cell capture and viability for downstream analysis.

The microfluidic device is injection molded in plastic with nano-channels in the shape of a sine curve for rare cell capture. The surface of the channels is coated with antibodies (or aptamers) targeting specific CTC biomarkers. The whole blood sample flows through the microfluidic chamber controlled by our proprietary robotic system. CTCs and other rare cells are affinity-captured on microfluidic chips with antibodies. The microfluidic chips are washed to eliminate cells other than the target rare cells (CTCs), which are then detached by enzymatic digestion to cleave specific linkers. The released cells are eluted and collected in the final step, ready for downstream analysis.

* LiquidScan is for Research Use Only.

BioFluidica is a privately held biotechnology and liquid biopsy company. We have developed a revolutionary liquid biopsy platform allowing for the isolation and analysis of all liquid biopsy biomarkers, including rare cells, extracellular vesicles (EVs; exosomes), and cfDNA, on one fully automated platform. The Biofluidica platform has been clinically tested on nine different cancer and prenatal patient samples and is currently used for a large variety of research applications to advance the field of liquid biopsy. The ultralow sensitivity expands the capability of current liquid biopsy applications. We are expert consultants in exosome isolation, fetal cell (trophoblast)  isolation, CTC isolation, and next-generation liquid biopsy. We develop and launch innovative scientific instruments, reagents, and software systems designed to provide exceptional value for scientists, clinicians, and patients.