High sensitive detection of circulating tumor cell by multimarker lipid magnetic nanoparticles and clinical verifications

Tumor cells with heterogeneity and diversity can express different markers. At present, positive separation of circulating tumor cells (CTC) taking EpCAM as the marker was used in most cases which could be one-sided, while this study successfully prepared four antibody-modified magnetic immunoliposomes (MIL) by using the self-assembled liposome with antibody derivatives. This study aims to explore the separation efficiency and clinical detection feasibility of single or combined use of MIL with multi-tumor markers on different tumors. Captured CTC were stained with CK-FITC, CD45-PE and DAPI, and fluorescence microscope was used for the observation, analysis and calculation. The result indicated that the CTC number positive rate in blood samples of four different magnetic balls on the same patient could be up to 87.5% in 32 patients with 14 different kinds tumors. While the effect of directly mixed separation by four kinds of magnetic balls was not satisfying. It suggested that the MIL of multi-tumor markers could be a powerful tool for CTC separation in application of tumor screening and prognosis.