An improved CTC isolation scheme for pairing with downstream genomics: Demonstrating clinical utility in metastatic prostate, lung and pancreatic cancer

Improvements in technologies to yield purer circulating tumor cells (CTCs) will enable a broader range of clinical applications. We have previously demonstrated the use of a commercially available cell-adhesion matrix (CAM) assay to capture invasive CTCs (iCTCs). To improve the purity of the isolated iCTCs, here we used fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) in combination with the CAM assay (CAM + FACS). Our results showed an increase of median purity from the CAM assay to CAM + FACS for the spiked-in cell lines and patient samples analyzed from three different metastatic cancer types: castration resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC), non-small cell lung cancer (mNSCLC) and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma cancer (mPDAC). Copy number profiles for spiked-in mCRPC cell line and mCRPC patient iCTCs were similar to expected mCRPC profiles and a matched biopsy. A somatic epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutation specific to mNSCLC was observed in the iCTCs recovered from EGFR(+) mNSCLC cell lines and patient samples. Next-generation sequencing (NGS) of spiked-in pancreatic cancer cell line and mPDAC patient iCTCs showed mPDAC common mutations. CAM + FACS iCTC enrichment enables multiple downstream genomic characterizations across different tumor types.