Researchers further refine ‘NanoVelcro’ device to grab single cancer cells from blood

Researchers at UCLA report that they have refined a method they previously developed for capturing and analysing cancer cells that break away from patients’ tumours and circulate in the blood. With the improvements to their device, which uses a Velcro-like nanoscale technology, they can now detect and isolate single cancer cells from patient blood samples for analysis.
Circulating tumour cells, or CTCs, play a crucial role in cancer metastasis, spreading from tumours to other parts of the body, where they form new tumours. When these cells are isolated from the blood early on, they can provide doctors with critical information about the type of cancer a patient has, the characteristics of the individual cancer and the potential progression of the disease. Doctors can also tell from these cells how to tailor a personalised treatment to a specific patient.
In recent years, a UCLA research team led by Hsian-Rong Tseng, an associate professor of molecular and medical pharmacology at the Crump Institute for Molecular Imaging and a member of both the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA and UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, has developed a ‘NanoVelcro’ chip. When blood is passed through the chip, extremely small ‘hairs’