New device successfully captures metastasis-associated circulating tumor cell clusters
Monday, May 18, 2015 - 10:00
in Physics & Chemistry
The latest version of a microfluidic device for capturing rare circulating tumor cells (CTCs) is the first designed specifically to capture clusters of two or more cells, rather than single cells. The new device called the Cluster-Chip was developed by the same Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) research team that created previous microchip-based devices and is described in a Nature Methods paper receiving advance online publication. Recent studies by MGH investigators and others have suggested that CTC clusters are significantly more likely to cause metastases than single circulating tumor cells.