title: Beyond the Capture of Circulating Tumor Cells: Next-Generation Devices and Materials.
abstract: Over the last decade, significant progress has been made towards the development of approaches that enable the capture of rare circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from the blood of cancer patients, a critical capability for noninvasive tumor profiling. These advances have leveraged new insights in materials chemistry and microfluidics and allowed the capture and enumeration of CTCs with unprecedented sensitivity. However, it has become increasingly clear that simply capturing and counting tumor cells launched into the bloodstream may not provide the information needed to advance our understanding of the biology of these rare cells, or to allow us to better exploit them in medicine. A variety of advances have now emerged demonstrating that more information can be extracted from CTCs with next-generation devices and materials featuring tailored physical and chemical properties. In this Minireview, the last ten years of work in this area will be discussed, with an emphasis on the groundbreaking work of the last five years, during which the focus has moved beyond the simple capture of CTCs and gravitated towards approaches that enable in-depth analysis.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Brenda J
authors.initials: BJ
authors.lastname: Green
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Tina
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Saberi Safaei
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Adam
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mepham
authors.affiliation: Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Mahmoud
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Labib
authors.affiliation: Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
authors.forename: Reza M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Mohamadi
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada. shana.kelley@utoronto.ca.|Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada. shana.kelley@utoronto.ca.|Department of Biochemistry, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada. shana.kelley@utoronto.ca.
authors.forename: Shana O
authors.initials: SO
authors.lastname: Kelley
mesh_terms: D002469:Cell Separation / Q000295:instrumentation*; D006801:Humans; D009360:Neoplastic Cells, Circulating / Q000473:pathology*
keywords: cancer; cell analysis; circulating tumor cells; microfluidics; nanomaterials