Sunitha Nagrath

TL;DR: The CTC-chip successfully identified CTCs in the peripheral blood of patients with metastatic lung, prostate, pancreatic, breast and colon cancer in 115 of 116 samples, with a range of 5–1,281CTCs per ml and approximately 50% purity.

TL;DR: Molecular analysis of circulating tumor cells from the blood of patients with lung cancer offers the possibility of monitoring changes in epithelial tumor genotypes during the course of treatment, and shows that a reduction in the number of captured cells was associated with a radiographic tumor response; an increase in theNumber of cells wasassociated with tumor progression, with the emergence of additional EGFR mutations in some cases.

TL;DR: A high-throughput microfluidic mixing device, the herringbone-chip, or “HB-Chip,” is described, which provides an enhanced platform for CTC isolation and reveals microclusters of CTCs, previously unappreciated tumor cell aggregates that may contribute to the hematogenous dissemination of cancer.

TL;DR: A silicon microfluidic cell-capture technology that, when coupled to an automated imaging system, enables the detection and enumeration of prostate cancer cells fished out from the blood, taking advantage of prostate-specific antigen (PSA), a unique prostate tumor–associated marker.

TL;DR: The ability of ExoChip to recover exosomes with intact RNA enabling profiling of exosomal-microRNAs through openarray analysis, which has potential applications in biomarker discovery.