Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are receiving a great amount of scientific interest as a diagnostic biomarker for various types of cancer. Despite the recent progress in the development of highly sensitive CTC isolation devices, post-capture analysis of CTCs is still hindered by technical challenges associated with their rarity. Herein, we present a multi-modal CTC screening platform which is capable to analyze CTCs and CTC-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs), simultaneously from a single sample. Cytochalasin B (CB) treatment promotes cells to release large number of EVs from their surface, as demonstrated by CB-treated cells (5 µg/mL for 3 h) secreting 3.5-fold more EVs, compared to the non-treated cells. CB further generates 1.7-fold more EVs from the cells captured on our CTC filtration device (the fabric filter), compared to those from the cell culture flasks, owing to its multiple pore structure design which reduces the non-specific binding of EVs. Both CB-treated cancer cells and CB-induced EVs are found to overexpress tumor-associated markers, demonstrating a potential for the development of CTC dual-screening platform. Collectively, the results presented in this study reveal that our multi-modal cancer screening platform can synergistically improve the reliability and efficacy of the current CTC analysis systems.

中文翻译：

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用于癌症筛查的多模式液体活检平台：在织物过滤器上筛查与癌症相关的稀有细胞和癌细胞衍生的囊泡，以进行可靠的液体活检分析。

循环肿瘤细胞（CTC）作为各种癌症的诊断生物标志物受到了极大的科学兴趣。尽管最近在高灵敏度 CTC 分离设备的开发方面取得了进展，但 CTC 的捕获后分析仍然受到与其稀有性相关的技术挑战的阻碍。在此，我们提出了一个多模式 CTC 筛选平台，该平台能够从单个样本中同时分析 CTC 和 CTC 衍生的细胞外囊泡 (EV)。细胞松弛素 B (CB) 处理可促进细胞从表面释放大量 EV，CB 处理的细胞（5 µg/mL，持续 3 小时）分泌的 EV 是未处理细胞的 3.5 倍。与细胞培养瓶中捕获的细胞相比，CB 进一步从我们的 CTC 过滤装置（织物过滤器）捕获的细胞中产生 1.7 倍多的 EV，因为其多孔结构设计减少了 EV 的非特异性结合。经 CB 处理的癌细胞和 CB 诱导的 EV 均被发现过度表达肿瘤相关标志物，证明了 CTC 双筛选平台开发的潜力。总的来说，本研究的结果表明，我们的多模式癌症筛查平台可以协同提高当前 CTC 分析系统的可靠性和有效性。