Evaluation of a new magnetic bead as an integrated platform for systematic CTC recognition, capture and clinical analysis.

A novel form of magnetic bead, namely antibody-coated magnetic lipid nano-vehicle (AMLV), was synthesized by embedding Fe3O4 nanoparticles into an amphiphilic antibody-modified liposome as a high-performance circulating tumor cell (CTC) hunter. The CTC capture performance of AMLV was validated based on an enlarged patient sample (including 318 colorectal, 78 breast, 77 lung and 55 liver cancer patients) with high detection rate. The preliminary comparison with Cellsearch was also conducted, indicating that the cell membrane-semblance AMLVEpCAM showed higher capture performance for different kinds of EpCAM-expressed circulating tumor cells in the peripheral blood (4.4 ± 1.2-fold for AMLVEpCAM vs CellsearchTM, n=5, P<0.001). Moreover, the AMLVEpCAM-isolated CTCs could be used as a functional material to provide various clinical information for tumor patients and work as an alternative of tumor tissue to conduct gene analysis after conventional PCR amplification.