"Portable" device captures cancerous blood cells – ScienceDaily

Developed by a team of engineers and physicians from the University of Michigan, it could help doctors diagnose and treat cancer more effectively.

"No one wants to do a biopsy, so if we could get enough cancer cells in the blood, we could use them to learn more about tumor biology and direct patient care, which is why we are excited," he says. Daniel F. Hayes, MD, Stuart B. Padnos Professor of Breast Cancer Research at the Rogel Cancer Center at the University of Michigan and senior author of Nature Communications.

Tumors can release more than 1,000 cancer cells in the blood in one minute. Current methods of capturing cancer cells from blood rely on samples taken from the patient – usually no more than one tablespoon taken in a single draw. Some blood samples come back without cancer cells, even in patients with advanced cancer, and a typical sample does not contain more than 10 cancer cells.

In a few hours at the hospital, the new device could continuously capture cancer cells directly into the vein, filtering much larger volumes of a patient's blood. In animal tests, the portable device's cell capture chip trapped 3.5 times more cancer cells per milliliter of blood than blood samples.

"It's the difference between a security camera that takes a snapshot of a door every five minutes or records a video.If an intruder enters between snapshots, you will not know it," says Sunitha Nagrath. , Ph.D., badociate professor of chemical engineering at UM, who led the development of the device.

Research shows that most cancer cells can not survive in the blood, but those that do are more likely to cause a new tumor. In general, it is these satellite tumors, called metastases, that are fatal, rather than the original tumor. This means that cancer cells captured in the blood might provide better information for treatment planning than those from a conventional biopsy.

The team tested the device in the dog at the Flint Animal Cancer Center at Colorado State University, in collaboration with Douglas Thamm, VMD, professor of veterinary oncology and director of clinical research. They injected healthy adult animals with human cancer cells, which are eliminated by the dog's immune system within a few hours without lasting effects.

During the two hours following the injection, the dogs received a mild sedative and were connected to the device, which detected 1 to 2% of their blood. At the same time, the dogs' blood was taken every 20 minutes and the cancer cells from these samples were collected on a chip of the same design.

The device reduces a machine that is usually the size of an oven to an object that could be worn on the wrist and connected to an arm vein. To badist with the design, the engineering team turned to Laura Cooling, MD, professor of clinical pathology at U-M and badociate director of the blood bank, where she manages the complete systems.

"The most difficult parts included all the components in one device, then made sure that the blood did not clot, that the cells did not clog the chip and that the whole device was completely sterile," said Tae Hyun Kim Ph D., who completed his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at the Nagrath Laboratory and is now a Postdoctoral Fellow at the California Institute of Technology.

They have developed protocols for mixing blood with heparin, a drug preventing clotting, and sterilization methods to kill bacteria without harming the cell-targeting immune markers, or antibodies, present on the chip . Kim has also packaged some of the smaller, medical-grade pumps into a 3D printed case with electronic and cancer cell capture chip.

The chip itself is a new version of one of Nagrath's most powerful devices. It uses graphene oxide nanomaterial to create dense forests of molecule chains with an antibody end, which allows it to trap more than 80% of cancer cells in the whole blood that pbades through it. The chip can also be used to grow the captured cancer cells, thus producing larger samples for further badysis.

In the next steps for the device, the team hopes to increase the blood treatment rate. Then, under Thamm's direction, they will use the optimized system to capture cancerous pet dog cells that come to the cancer center as patients. Fleas targeting proteins on the surface of canine bad cancer cells are being developed at the Nagrath laboratory.

Hayes believes the device could begin testing on humans three to five years from now. It would be used to help optimize cancer treatments in humans by allowing doctors to see if cancer cells make the molecules that serve as targets for many new anti-cancer drugs.

"It's the quintessence of precision medicine, which is so exciting in the field of oncology today," says Hayes.