New Aspects of CTC Research for Basic Medicine and Clinical Application

A special issue of Diagnostics (ISSN 2075-4418). This special issue belongs to the section "Pathology and Molecular Diagnostics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 January 2026 | Viewed by 300

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Laboratory of Clinical Pathology, Okazaki City Hospital, Okazaki 4440002, Japan
Interests: CTC; metastasis; mobilization; cluster heterogeneity; routine blood test; genetic analysis; CTC organoid

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Although circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) has now been established and widely used in clinical practice for repetitive genetic analysis, clinical application of CTC, another piece of liquid biopsy, still seems to be somewhat limited. However, CTC research is versatile and there is much potential in terms of both basic medical science and clinical application. Such CTC research includes the relationship between CTC and metastasis formation, mechanism of mobilization of CTCs into blood, heterogeneity of CTC including CTC clusters with hybrid type and epithelial–mesenchymal transition, cost-effective CTC detection and enumeration methodology capable to use in the routine blood test in the hospital, and sequential CTC monitoring for clarifying the dynamics of therapy response and genetic analysis of CTC. The purpose of this Special Issue is to highlight the latest advances in the field of CTC. Original research articles and literature reviews are welcome.

Dr. Hayao Nakanishi
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • CTC
  • metastasis
  • mobilization
  • cluster heterogeneity
  • routine blood test
  • genetic analysis
  • CTC organoid

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

11 pages, 2805 KiB  
Article
A Novel CTC-Binding Probe: Enzymatic vs. Shear Stress-Based Detachment Approaches
by Sophia Krakowski, Sara Campos, Henri Wolff, Gabi Bondzio, Felix Hehnen, Michael Lommel, Ulrich Kertzscher and Paul Friedrich Geus
Diagnostics 2025, 15(15), 1876; https://doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics15151876 - 26 Jul 2025
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Abstract
Background/Objectives: Liquid biopsy is a minimally invasive alternative to tissue biopsy and is used to obtain information about a disease from a blood sample or other body fluids. In the context of cancer, circulating tumor cells (CTC) can be used as biomarkers [...] Read more.
Background/Objectives: Liquid biopsy is a minimally invasive alternative to tissue biopsy and is used to obtain information about a disease from a blood sample or other body fluids. In the context of cancer, circulating tumor cells (CTC) can be used as biomarkers to determine the nature of the tumor, its stage of progression, and the efficiency of the administered therapy through monitoring. However, the low concentration of CTCs in blood (1–10 cells/mL) is a challenge for their isolation. Therefore, a minimally invasive medical device (BMProbe™) was developed that isolates CTCs via antigen–antibody binding directly from the bloodstream. Current investigations focus on the process of detaching bound cells from the BMProbe™ surface for cell cultivation and subsequent drug testing to enable personalized therapy planning. Methods: This article presents two approaches for detaching LNCaP cells from anti-EpCAM coated BMProbes™: enzymatic detachment using TrypLE™ and detachment through enzymatic pretreatment with supplementary flow-induced shear stress. The additional shear stress is intended to increase the detachment efficiency. To determine the flow rate required to gently detach the cells, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation was carried out. Results: The experimental test results demonstrate that 91% of the bound cells can be detached enzymatically within 10 min. Based on the simulation, a maximum flow rate of 47.76 mL/min was defined in the flow detachment system, causing an average shear stress of 8.4 Pa at the probe edges. The additional flow treatment did not increase the CTC detachment efficiency. Conclusions: It is feasible that the detachment efficiency can be further increased by a longer enzymatic incubation time or higher shear stress. The influence on the integrity and viability of cells must, however, be considered. Full article
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