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Cancer affects almost everyone in one way or another and, unfortunately, it will still make 600,000 victims in the United States by 2019, according to the American Cancer Society. Researchers from the State University of San Diego, TumorGen MDx Inc. and the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute have embarked on exploring a seemingly fundamental question: what is it that kill cancer?
The answer is that about 90% of cancer deaths are due to metastases, when tumors spread to other vital organs. How does cancer metastasize? After exhaustive research in the scientific literature, the researchers understood that they were not individual cells but distinct clusters of cancer cells that circulate and metastasize in other organs.
As the group reports in AIP advances, from AIP Publishing, this has led them to wonder whether these clusters of cells are the "root causes of cancer", why is there not more research going on to better understand the clusters of circulating cancer cells?
The reason for this lack of research activity is the enormous difficulty of capturing these extremely rare clusters of metastatic cancer cells from a patient's blood sample. But we realized that if we had to understand the complex process of cancer metastasis, we would have to develop a tool to easily find these clusters. "
Peter Teriete, one of the authors and research badistant professor at the Sanford Burnham Medical Prebys Discovery Institute
To do this, researchers first identified the basic requirements essential to collecting useful information from clusters of isolated cancer cells. This involves a sample large enough to contain an appreciable number of cancer cell groups (approximately 10 milliliters of whole blood), as well as the use of whole blood to preserve circulating rare groups. Whole blood, however, requires channel-coating procedures that reduce nonspecific binding properties to prevent biofouling. And the dimensions of the device channel must be of a size appropriate to accommodate single cells and clusters of cancer cells of different diameters.
"The channel design of our device was expected to generate microfluidic flow characteristics suitable for facilitating cell capture via antibodies in the coated channels," Teriete explained. "So, we introduced microfunctions – chevron recesses – to produce the desired functionality, and we also developed a unique alginate hydrogel coating that can be easily decorated with antibodies or other biomolecules. develop a device and prove that it works as desired. "
The microfluidic device of the group brings a new therapeutic strategy in the fight against cancer metastases. Capturing clusters of viable circulating cancer stem cells directly from cancer patients is a novel approach to the development of new anti-metastatic drug therapies.
"The development of drugs specifically targeting distant metastases has been severely limited due to the lack of adequate tools to easily access the metastatic cells responsible for the spread of cancer," Teriete said. "Our microfluidic device will provide cancer researchers with real clusters of human cancer cells, allowing them to begin to understand the critical mechanisms involved in metastasis and to develop highly effective drugs that can ultimately save the lives of more than 50,000 people." cancer patients. "
Source:
American Institute of Physics
Journal reference:
Teriete, P. et al. (2019) Design and production of a new microfluidic device for the capture and isolation of circulating tumor cells aggregates. AIP advances. doi.org/10.1063/1.5084736.
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