Liquid biopsy: In vivo capturing and molecular characterization of circulating tumor cells as a novel tool for improving tertiary prevention in breast cancer

Partners

Greece: University of Athens
Greece: University of Crete
Germany: GILUPI GmbH

The described deficiencies of current CTC assays have generated skepticism in the medical community about the reliability of current CTC testing, which is part of the reasons why CTC analyses are still not recommended for patient management by medical associations (e.g., ASCO). The CE-certified nanowire device developed by the SME GILUPI has the potential to solve the main obstacles of CTC testing.

The project will strengthen the existing collaboration between the Greek and German partners (see below) and has the following specific objectives:

•Increasing the yield of CTCs by analysis of large amounts of blood (1.5 L) using in vivo CTC cap-ture as a novel approach;
•Implementation of new cell surface antigens that will capture in vivo CTCs undergoing an epithelial-mesenchymal transition;
•Development of reliable assays for molecular and genetic characterization of CTCs;
•Addressing the key question of a liquid biopsy as to whether CTCs resemble the corresponding primary tumors in non-metastatic patients at primary diagnosis or distant metastases in patients at the time of metastatic relapse.

Breast cancer will serve as model disease, since CTC testing has been widely implemented and clini-cal results for the first nanowire product are available for this cancer entity.