Clinical test on circulating tumor cells in peripheral blood of lung cancer patients, based on novel immunomagnetic beads

Abstract

This paper aims to establish a novel and highly sensitive method to detect circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the peripheral blood of patients with lung cancer. This therefore enables the discovery of invisible micrometastasis in the early stage of lung cancer, leading to better prognostic assessments of lung cancer and detection of the post-operative tumor recurrence and metastasis, treatment options, and evaluation of curative effects. In this research study, various lung cancer cells were mixed with adult blood samples to simulate blood samples of tumor patients. With novel test methods, CTCs in peripheral blood of lung cancer patients were calculated, after the reaction between the cells obtained from the mix and EpCAM (epithelial cell adhesion molecule) antibodies which were marked by immunomagnetic beads. The results showed that 18 out of 42 (42.9%) lung cancer patients had a positive CTCs, which increased with tumor enlargement or metastasis. CTCs were not detected in a total of 20 blood samples from healthy volunteers. This indicated that the technology of novel immunomagnetic bead-enrichment could effectively separate and identify CTCs in peripheral blood of lung cancer patients, which is of great clinical value for prognostic assessments and treatment guidance of lung cancer.