Image: Capturing cancer cells: A new microfluidics chip designed to isolate tumor cells from blood captures clusters of cancer cells, shown here, which may play a role in cancer’s spread. Credit: PNASFrom Technology Review:
The devices may one day help patients skip invasive and painful biopsies.
Technologies that analyze cancer cells that circulate through a patient's bloodstream could provide a less invasive way of monitoring cancer and selecting the best treatments. So Mehmet Toner and collaborators at Massachusetts General Hospital have developed a microfluidics chip that effectively captures these rare cells, which make up just one in a billion cells in blood, in high enough numbers to analyze them for molecular markers. The device also isolated clusters of tumor cells for the first time, which may help shed light on cancer's ability to spread, or metastasize, from its initial birthplace.
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