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Liu Y, Zhao W, Hodgson J, Egan M, Cooper Pope CN, Hicks G, Nikolinakos PG, Mao L. CTC-Race: Single-Cell Motility Assay of Circulating Tumor Cells from Metastatic Lung Cancer Patients. ACS Nano 2024; 18:8683-8693. [PMID: 38465942 PMCID: PMC10976960 DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.3c09450] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/28/2023] [Revised: 02/26/2024] [Accepted: 03/04/2024] [Indexed: 03/12/2024]
Abstract
Distinctive subpopulations of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) with increased motility are considered to possess enhanced tumor-initiating potential and contribute to metastasis. Single-cell analysis of the migratory CTCs may increase our understanding of the metastatic process, yet most studies are limited by technical challenges associated with the isolation and characterization of these cells due to their extreme scarcity and heterogeneity. We report a microfluidic method based on CTCs' chemotactic motility, termed as CTC-Race assay, that can analyze migrating CTCs from metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with advanced tumor stages and enable concurrent biophysical and biochemical characterization of them with single-cell resolution. Analyses of motile CTCs in the CTC-Race assay, in synergy with other single cell characterization techniques, could provide insights into cancer metastasis.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yang Liu
- School
of Chemical, Materials and Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering, The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602, United States
| | - Wujun Zhao
- FCS
Technology, LLC, Athens, Georgia 30602, United States
| | - Jamie Hodgson
- University
Cancer and Blood Center, LLC, Athens, Georgia 30607, United States
| | - Mary Egan
- University
Cancer and Blood Center, LLC, Athens, Georgia 30607, United States
| | | | - Glenda Hicks
- University
Cancer and Blood Center, LLC, Athens, Georgia 30607, United States
| | | | - Leidong Mao
- School
of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering, The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602, United States
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Liu Y, Zhao W, Cheng R, Hodgson J, Egan M, Pope CNC, Nikolinakos PG, Mao L. Simultaneous biochemical and functional phenotyping of single circulating tumor cells using ultrahigh throughput and recovery microfluidic devices. Lab Chip 2021; 21:3583-3597. [PMID: 34346469 DOI: 10.1039/d1lc00454a] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/13/2023]
Abstract
Profiling circulating tumour cells (CTCs) in cancer patients' blood samples is critical to understand the complex and dynamic nature of metastasis. This task is challenged by the fact that CTCs are not only extremely rare in circulation but also highly heterogeneous in their molecular programs and cellular functions. Here we report a combinational approach for the simultaneous biochemical and functional phenotyping of patient-derived CTCs, using an integrated inertial ferrohydrodynamic cell separation (i2FCS) method and a single-cell microfluidic migration assay. This combinatorial approach offers unique capability to profile CTCs on the basis of their surface expression and migratory characteristics. We achieve this using the i2FCS method that successfully processes whole blood samples in a tumor cell marker and size agnostic manner. The i2FCS method enables an ultrahigh blood sample processing throughput of up to 2 × 105 cells s-1 with a blood sample flow rate of 60 mL h-1. Its short processing time (10 minutes for a 10 mL sample), together with a close-to-complete CTC recovery (99.70% recovery rate) and a low WBC contamination (4.07-log depletion rate by removing 99.992% of leukocytes), results in adequate and functional CTCs for subsequent studies in the single-cell migration device. For the first time, we employ this new approach to query CTCs with single-cell resolution in accordance with their expression of phenotypic surface markers and migration properties, revealing the dynamic phenotypes and the existence of a high-motility subpopulation of CTCs in blood samples from metastatic lung cancer patients. This method could be adopted to study the biological and clinical value of invasive CTC phenotypes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yang Liu
- Department of Chemistry, The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA
| | - Wujun Zhao
- FCS Technology, LLC, Athens, GA, 30606, USA
| | - Rui Cheng
- School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering, The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA.
| | - Jamie Hodgson
- University Cancer & Blood Center, LLC, Athens, GA, 30607, USA
| | - Mary Egan
- University Cancer & Blood Center, LLC, Athens, GA, 30607, USA
| | | | | | - Leidong Mao
- School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering, The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA.
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Liu Y, Zhao W, Cheng R, Puig A, Hodgson J, Egan M, Cooper Pope CN, Nikolinakos PG, Mao L. Label-free inertial-ferrohydrodynamic cell separation with high throughput and resolution. Lab Chip 2021; 21:2738-2750. [PMID: 34018527 DOI: 10.1039/d1lc00282a] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/22/2023]
Abstract
Rapid and label-free separation of target cells from biological samples provided unique opportunity for disease diagnostics and treatment. However, even with advanced technologies for cell separation, the limited throughput, high cost and low separation resolution still prevented their utility in separating cells with well-defined physical features from a large volume of biological samples. Here we described an ultrahigh-throughput microfluidic technology, termed as inertial-ferrohydrodynamic cell separation (inertial-FCS), that rapidly sorted through over 60 milliliters of samples at a throughput of 100 000 cells per second in a label-free manner, differentiating the cells based on their physical diameter difference with ∼1-2 μm separation resolution. Through the integration of inertial focusing and ferrohydrodynamic separation, we demonstrated that the resulting inertial-FCS devices could separate viable and expandable circulating tumor cells from cancer patients' blood with a high recovery rate and high purity. We also showed that the devices could enrich lymphocytes directly from white blood cells based on their physical morphology without any labeling steps. This label-free method could address the needs of high throughput and high resolution cell separation in circulating tumor cell research and adoptive cell transfer immunotherapy.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yang Liu
- Department of Chemistry, The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA
| | - Wujun Zhao
- FCS Technology LLC, Athens, Georgia, USA
| | - Rui Cheng
- School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering, The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA.
| | - Alicia Puig
- Department of Microbiology, Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas, USA
| | - Jamie Hodgson
- University Cancer & Blood Center, LLC, Athens, Georgia, USA
| | - Mary Egan
- University Cancer & Blood Center, LLC, Athens, Georgia, USA
| | | | | | - Leidong Mao
- School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering, The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA.
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