Principal Investigators: Daniel Haber, MD, PhD – Mass General Hospital; Matthew Smith, MD, PhD – Mass General Hospital; Mehmet Toner, PhD – Harvard Univ.
Massachusetts General Hospital

Progression Biomarkers

• A “version 2.0” high efficiency microfluidic device has been developed for high isolation of live circulating tumor cells (CTCs which are rogue cancer cells that broke away from the tumor and entered the bloodstream).
  • The device consists of a herringbone “laminar flow” chip designed to handle large volumes of patient blood. The blood flows through the chip and the CTCs stick to the walls of the chip.
  • Compared to version 1.0, version 2.0 can capture 100x more CTCs/drop of blood.
  • The chip is easily manufactured and scalable for mass production.
  • Automated microscopy software was developed to count the number of CTCs adherent to the chip.
• In addition to counting the CTCs, version 2.0 enables researchers to image the cells to identify specific molecular characteristics that will provide important information about how the cancer cells are growing and which treatment options are predicted to be most effective at killing the cells.