We are pleased to share that our recent study on circulating tumor cell (CTC) detection has been published in Cancers. Here, we compare different strategies for identification of colorectal CTCs after VAR2CSA-based bead capture.

The study was conducted in close collaboration with EXACT Sciences enabling the powerful combination of highly sensitive cancer cell capture by VAR2CSA and detection of cancer-specific transcripts by RT-qPCR using the proprietary Target Enrichment Long-probe Quantitative Amplified Signal (TELQAS). We evaluate the performance of the novel workflow and show proof-of-concept by repeatedly detecting as few as 10 cancer cells in 3 mL blood after VAR2CSA capture.

Patients suffering from colorectal cancer present with relatively few CTCs per blood sample as compared to other cancer types, and thus CTC-based diagnostic assays, demand a high degree of sensitivity. The PCR workflow presented in this study successfully met the criteria for analytical validation, which enables us to move onwards into clinical feasibility studies. Hopefully, the highly sensitive assay presented in this study will provide a novel strategy for early detection of colorectal cancer.

Read the publication:
Detection of VAR2CSA-Captured Colorectal Cancer Cells from Blood Samples by Real-Time Reverse Transcription PCR