title: Nanostructured substrates for isolation of circulating tumor cells.
abstract: Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) originate from the primary tumor mass and enter into the peripheral bloodstream. CTCs hold the key to understanding the biology of metastasis and also play a vital role in cancer diagnosis, prognosis, disease monitoring, and personalized therapy. However, CTCs are rare in blood and hard to isolate. Additionally, the viability of CTCs can easily be compromised under high shear stress while releasing them from a surface. The heterogeneity of CTCs in biomarker expression makes their isolation quite challenging; the isolation efficiency and specificity of current approaches need to be improved. Nanostructured substrates have emerged as a promising biosensing platform since they provide better isolation sensitivity at the cost of specificity for CTC isolation. This review discusses major challenges faced by CTC isolation techniques and focuses on nanostructured substrates as a platform for CTC isolation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Oncology, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Southeast University, Southeast University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210003, PR China.
authors.forename: Lixue
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Bio-Acoustic MEMS in Medicine (BAMM) Laboratories, Center for Biomedical Engineering, Renal Division and Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
authors.forename: Waseem
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Asghar
authors.affiliation: Bio-Acoustic MEMS in Medicine (BAMM) Laboratories, Center for Biomedical Engineering, Renal Division and Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA ; Harvard-Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
authors.forename: Utkan
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Demirci
authors.affiliation: Department of Oncology, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Southeast University, Southeast University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210003, PR China ; Ian Wark Research Institute, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, Adelaide, SA 5095, Australia.
authors.forename: Yuan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wan
keywords: Biomarkers; Cancer; Circulating tumor cells; Diagnosis; Heterogeneity; Nano surface