Use of the DEPArray platform to detect, isolate, and molecularly characterize pure tumor cells from peripheral blood samples enriched using the CellSearch system.

10616 Background: Circulating tumor cells (CTC) offer the potential for serially monitoring the molecular profile of a tumor. However, enrichment techniques provide a level of purity problematic for most molecular analysis methods, and do not readily provide for analysis of tumor cell heterogeneity. We evaluate the use of DEPArray (Silicon Biosystems), an automated system enabling image-based cell sorting with single-cell resolution, for CTC isolation and characterization from enriched blood samples. Methods: Experiments were carried out with healthy-donor blood (HB) collected in CellSave tubes, spiked with tumor cells (TC) and enriched on Veridex’s AutoPrep with the CellSearch Epithelial Cell Kit. DEPArray system was used for detection and multiple recoveries of single TCs (or control WBCs) and 5 cell batches. A comparison of blind enumeration results with Veridex’s CellTracks Analyzer II (CTAII) was carried out on replicate samples. Results: No TCs were detected among negative controls (n=10). TC count ...