Isolation and detection of circulating tumour cells from metastatic melanoma patients using a slanted spiral microfluidic device

Authors

Carlos A. Aya-Bonilla, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow
Gabriela Marsavela, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow
James B. Freeman, Edith Cowan University
Chris Lomma
Markus Frank, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow
Muhammad Khattak
Tarek Meniawy
Michael Millward
Majid Warkiani
Elin S. Gray, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow
Mel Ziman, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow

Document Type

Journal Article

Publisher

Impact Journals

School

School of Medical and Health Sciences

RAS ID

24631

Funders

National Health and Medical Research (NHMRC)

Western Australia Cancer Council

Early Career Investigator (2016)

Edith Cowan University Early Career Research grant (2016)

Fellowship from the Cancer Research Trust

Grant Number

NHMRC Number : APP1046711

Comments

Aya-Bonilla, C.A., Marsavela, G., Freeman, J.B., Lomma, C., Frank, M.H., Khattak, M.A., ... & Ziman, M. (2017). Isolation and detection of circulating tumour cells from metastatic melanoma patients using a slanted spiral microfluidic device. Oncotarget, 8(40), 67355–67368.

https://doi.org/10.18632/oncotarget.18641

Abstract

Circulating Tumour Cells (CTCs) are promising cancer biomarkers. Several methods have been developed to isolate CTCs from blood samples. However, the isolation of melanoma CTCs is very challenging as a result of their extraordinary heterogeneity, which has hindered their biological and clinical study. Thus, methods that isolate CTCs based on their physical properties, rather than surface marker expression, such as microfluidic devices, are greatly needed in melanoma. Here, we assessed the ability of the slanted spiral microfluidic device to isolate melanoma CTCs via label-free enrichment. We demonstrated that this device yields recovery rates of spiked melanoma cells of over 80% and 55 %, after one or two rounds of enrichment, respectively. Concurrently, a two to three log reduction of white blood cells was achieved with one or two rounds of enrichment, respectively. We characterised the isolated CTCs using multimarker flow cytometry, immunocytochemistry and gene expression. The results demonstrated that CTCs from metastatic melanoma patients were highly heterogeneous and commonly expressed stem-like markers such as PAX3 and ABCB5. The implementation of the slanted microfluidic device for melanoma CTC isolation enables further understanding of the biology of melanoma metastasis for biomarker development and to inform future treatment approaches.

DOI

10.18632/oncotarget.18641

Related Publications

Marsavela, A. (2017). Optimisation of the isolation and identification of circulating melanoma cells. Retrieved from http://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/1993

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia License.