New study extends application range of GILUPI CellCollector® towards quantitative analysis of gene expression in circulating tumor cells

CTCs are a surrogate marker for cancer progression and response to therapy. CTCs indicate tumor cell spreading and are a prerequisite for the development of metastasis. Detection and characterization of these rare cells could provide a powerful approach for early disease diagnosis as well as disease monitoring. The GILUPI CellCollector^® offers medical personnel at any point-of-care with the unique opportunity to enrich these CTCs in vivo.

In this peer reviewed study, El-Heliebi from the Medical University of Graz and his coworkers combine the enumeration and expression analysis of CTCs by developing an in situ padlock probe assay. This method enables the quantitative analysis of mRNA expression for therapy relevant cancer markers. For this study, the GILUPI CellCollector^® was applied to patients with prostate and pancreatic cancer and subsequent CTC enumeration and detection of mRNA transcripts were conducted by fluorescence microscopy.
In summary, CTCs were detected in 62% of prostate cancer and 47% of pancreatic cancer patients and therapy relevant cancer markers (e.g. AR-V7 transcripts or KRAS mutations) were identified in the majority of those cells. This advanced approach will improve the predictive and prognostic value of CTC analysis in clinical practice and therefore lead to further advances in cancer research and patient care.

^[1] El-Heliebi et al. " In Situ Detection and Quantification of AR-V7, AR-FL, PSA, and KRAS Point Mutations in Circulating Tumor Cells” Clin Chem. 2018 Jan4. pii:clinchem.2017.281295. doi: 10.1373/clinchem.2017.281295.