Immunoengineered magnetic-quantum dot nanobead system for the isolation and detection of circulating tumor cells

BACKGROUND: Highly efficient capture and detection of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) remain elusive mainly because of their extremely low concentration in patients’ peripheral blood. METHODS: We present an approach for the simultaneous capturing, isolation, and detection of CTCs using an immuno-fluorescent magnetic nanobead system (iFMNS) coated with a monoclonal anti-EpCAM antibody. RESULTS: The developed antibody nanobead system allows magnetic isolation and fluorescent-based quantification of CTCs. The expression of EpCAM on the surface of captured CTCs could be directly visualized without additional immune-fluorescent labeling. Our approach is shown to result in a 70–95% capture efficiency of CTCs, and 95% of the captured cells remain viable. Using our approach, the isolated cells could be directly used for culture, reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), and immunocytochemistry (ICC) identification. We applied iFMNS for testing CTCs in peripheral blood samples from a lung cancer patient. CONCLUSIONS: It is suggested that our iFMNS approach would be a promising tool for CTCs enrichment and detection in one step. GRAPHIC ABSTRACT: [Image: see text] SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12951-021-00860-1.