Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-5-2015
Abstract
Ligand-directed targeting and capturing of cancer cells is a new approach for detecting circulating tumor cells (CTCs). Ligands such as antibodies have been successfully used for capturing cancer cells and an antibody based system (CellSearch®) is currently used clinically to enumerate CTCs. Here we report the use of a peptide moiety in conjunction with a microcantilever array system to selectively detect CTCs resulting from cancer, specifically breast cancer. A sensing microcantilever, functionalized with a breast cancer specific peptide 18-4 (WxEAAYQrFL), showed significant deflection on cancer cell (MCF7 and MDA-MB-231) binding compared to when exposed to noncancerous (MCF10A and HUVEC) cells. The peptide-functionalized microcantilever allowed efficient capture and detection of cancer cells in MCF7 spiked human blood samples emulating CTCs in human blood. A detection limit of 50–100 cancer cells mL−1 from blood samples was achieved with a capture yield of 80% from spiked whole blood samples. The results emphasize the potential of peptide 18-4 as a novel peptide for capturing and detecting cancer cells in conjunction with nanomechanical cantilever platform. The reported peptide-based cantilever platform represents a new analytical approach that can lead to an alternative to the various detection platforms and can be leveraged to further study CTCs.
Recommended Citation
Etayash, H. et al. Real-time Detection of Breast Cancer Cells Using Peptidefunctionalized Microcantilever Arrays. Sci. Rep. 5, 13967; doi: 10.1038/srep13967 (2015).
Supplementary Information
Copyright
Nature Publishing Group
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Included in
Amino Acids, Peptides, and Proteins Commons, Cancer Biology Commons, Oncology Commons, Other Analytical, Diagnostic and Therapeutic Techniques and Equipment Commons, Other Medical Sciences Commons, Women's Health Commons
Comments
This article was originally published in Scientific Reports, volume 5, in 2015. DOI: 10.1038/srep13967