Nanoroughened Surfaces for Efficient Capture of Circulating Tumor Cells without Using Capture Antibodies

Weiqiang Chen †‡, Shinuo Weng †‡, Feng Zhang †§,Steven Allen , Xiang Li †‡, Liwei Bao ¶, Raymond H. W. Lam #, Jill A. Macoska , Sofia D. Merajver ¶, and Jianping Fu †‡▲*

^†Integrated Biosystems and Biomechanics Laboratory,^‡Department of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Cellular and Molecular Biology, ^¶Department of Internal Medicine, Department of Urology,University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center, and^▲Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109, United States

^§ Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 200030, China

^# Department of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

ACS Nano, Article ASAP

DOI: 10.1021/nn304719q

Publication Date (Web): November 29, 2012

Copyright © 2012 American Chemical Society

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) detached from both primary and metastatic lesions represent a potential alternative to invasive biopsies as a source of tumor tissue for the detection, characterization and monitoring of cancers. Here we report a simple yet effective strategy for capturing CTCs without using capture antibodies. Our method uniquely utilized the differential adhesion preference of cancer cells to nanorough surfaces when compared to normal blood cells and thus did not depend on their physical size or surface protein expression, a significant advantage as compared to other existing CTC capture techniques .