Applications

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) have a huge potential influence over managements of patients with cancer. However, the only tool available on the market CellSearch shows significant variability in the results while tested on positive samples. This fact prevents its clinical implementation for routine CTC detection. Also, CellSearch is primarily based on the detection of epithelial markers. However, these markers can undergo the Epithelial Marker Transition, which results in the disappearance of these markers on the CTCs surface. Therefore, they become undetectable using this technique. Hence, our goal is to develop a cheap and sensitive assay for CTC detection, that do not depend on these markers. We believe that increased lactate production is a differentiating feature of cancer cells compared to normal cells (Warburg effect). A second signal is then necessary to make this test more specific. We chose the sensitivity to apoptosis as a second signal.

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