Rare cell populations provide a patient-centric tool to monitor disease treatment, response, and resistance. However, understanding rare cells is a complex problem, which requires cell isolation/purification and downstream molecular interrogation – processes challenged by non-target populations, which vary patient-to-patient and change with disease. As such, cell isolation platforms must be amenable to a range of sample types while maintaining high efficiency and purity. The multiplexed technology for automated extraction (mTAE) is a versatile magnetic bead-based isolation platform that facilitates positive, negative, and combinatorial selection with integrated protein staining and nucleic acid isolation. mTAE is validated by isolating circulating tumor cells (CTCs) – a model rare cell population – from breast and prostate cancer patient samples. Negative selection yielded high efficiency capture of CTCs while positive selection yielded higher purity with an average of only 95 contaminant cells captured per milliliter of processed whole blood. With combinatorial selection, an overall increase in capture efficiency was observed, highlighting the potential significance of integrating multiple capture approaches on a single platform. Following capture (and staining), on platform nucleic acid extraction enabled the detection of androgen receptor-related transcripts from CTCs isolated from prostate cancer patients. The flexibility (e.g. negative, positive, combinatorial selection) and capabilities (e.g. isolation, protein staining, and nucleic acid extraction) of mTAE enable users to freely interrogate specific cell populations, a capability required to understand the potential of emerging rare cell populations and readily adapt to the heterogeneity presented across clinical samples.

中文翻译：

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基于多功能排阻的样品制备平台，用于整合稀有细胞分离和分析物提取†

稀有细胞群提供了以患者为中心的工具，以监测疾病的治疗，反应和抵抗力。但是，了解稀有细胞是一个复杂的问题，需要细胞分离/纯化和下游分子审讯-这些过程受到非目标人群的挑战，这些人群因病而异，并随疾病而变化。因此，细胞分离平台必须适应各种样品类型，同时保持高效率和纯度。自动提取的多重技术（mTAE）是一种基于磁珠的多功能分离平台，可通过集成的蛋白质染色和核酸分离促进阳性，阴性和组合选择。通过从乳腺癌和前列腺癌患者样本中分离出循环肿瘤细胞（CTC）（一种罕见细胞模型），对mTAE进行了验证。阴性选择产生了四氯化碳的高效捕获，而阳性选择产生了更高的纯度，每毫升处理过的全血平均仅捕获95个污染物细胞。通过组合选择，可以观察到捕获效率的整体提高，突出了在单个平台上集成多种捕获方法的潜在重要性。捕获（和染色）后，在平台上进行核酸提取可以检测到从前列腺癌患者体内分离出的CTC中与雄激素受体相关的转录本。灵活性（观察到捕获效率的总体提高，突出了在单个平台上集成多种捕获方法的潜在重要性。捕获（和染色）后，在平台上进行核酸提取可以检测到从前列腺癌患者体内分离出的CTC中与雄激素受体相关的转录本。灵活性（观察到捕获效率的总体提高，突出了在单个平台上集成多种捕获方法的潜在重要性。捕获（和染色）后，在平台上进行核酸提取可以检测到从前列腺癌患者体内分离出的CTC中与雄激素受体相关的转录本。灵活性（mTAE的功能（例如阴性，阳性，组合选择）和功能（例如分离，蛋白质染色和核酸提取），使用户能够自由询问特定的细胞群，这是了解新兴稀有细胞群的潜力并易于适应疾病的能力。临床样品中存在异质性。