Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Capturing and release of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from blood using nanopillars or other nanostructures

Capturing cancer tumor cells from the blood - MaterialsViews

This paper describes the use is 3D silicon nanopillar array coated with specific antibodies to capture and release CTCs using thermal means.

A similar approach is reported here

Scientists develop new nanotechnology to capture, release tumor cells that circulate in bloodstream


(using nano-velcro)

Nanostructured Surfaces to Target and Kill Circulating Tumor Cells While Repelling Leukocytes

(using Halloysite nanotubes)

the approach reported here is also in a similar category
(using DNA tentacles)

Specific Capture and Release of Circulating Tumor Cells Using Aptamer-Modified Nanosubstrates


High-Purity Prostate Circulating Tumor Cell Isolation by a Polymer Nanofiber-Embedded Microchip for Whole Exome Sequencing



Focus review 2013: Label free microfluidic technologies for isolation of circulating tumor cells (CTCs)

Label-free isolation of circulating tumor cells in microfluidic devices: Current research and perspectives

This paper is quite comprehensive in covering the many label free approaches to CTC isolation reported so far, including, filters, accoustophoresis, magnetophoresis, etc.

The general recommendation of the paper is towards adoption of these technologies for clinical use.

undoubtedly, there are several advantages to label-free isolation of CTCs, specially filtration techniques, which are simple, inexpensive, fast and easy to use. However, there are some important limitations that need to be considered,  which I was hoping the paper would shed light upon, but didnt.

the general limitations of filtration techniques are listed here.

It was also recently reported that the deformability of tumor initiating cells is less differentiated from normal blood cells. This makes the sized and deformability based techniques vulnerable to missing these important subtypes of CTCs. This is covered here 

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Circulating Tumor Cell ( CTC ) market info


Below is a compilation of publicly available market info from various sources

Market Potential

A recent market report was published by Transparency Market Research (http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com) titled "Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) and Cancer Stem Cells (CSCs) Market - Global Scenario, Trends, Size, Growth and Industry Analysis, 2011 - 2018." Globally, CTCs and CSCs Market is estimated to reach USD 7.9 billion by 2018. The global market for cancer diagnostics based on Circulating Cancer Cells (CTCs) was estimated at USD 1.0 billion in 2011. Majority of the share is most likely held by Veridex LLC (Johnson and Johnson)

CTC market estimates used by other CTC companies
company
Price/test
Market size
comment
Creatv Microtech [1]
USD 600
10-20 Bln
20-30 mln tests in US.
1 test/year/patient
Ikonisys [2]
USD 400
35 Bln
Total Addressable Market: 4 Bln (monitoring), 35 Bln (early detection)
Parsortix (listed) [3]
na
4 Bln
Est. 20,000 separations from single pharma site p.a. 25 Mln p.a. early stage rev.
Rheoblast [4]
na
5.2 Bln
10 Mln US patients= 25 M tests/year. 2-3 tests/yr/pat.
6000 clinical labs in US (2-3% growth)
1400 cancer treatment centers in US (6-7% growth)
150 biomarker companies and research labs

Figure 4:  source [4]

CTC application segment
CAGR
Prognosis
-
Therapy monitoring
26.54%
Diagnostics
26.48%
Prognostic functions hold 58.28% of the total CTC Technologies market



Figure 5 is the estimated market share by a CTC company, Silicon Biosystems, which provides solution for cell sorting.

Figure 6 is the estimated market share by a CTC company, Filtini, which provides microfilter based CTC isolation device

The demand for cellular analysis will also expand significantly during the next five years. This sector was worth $10 million in 2010 and is expected to increase at a 95.4% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to reach $296 million in 2015.

List of all active commercial circulating tumor cell ( CTC ) technologies is here
http://circulating-tumor-cells.blogspot.com/2010/12/commercial-circulating-tumor-cell-ctc.html

other documents of interest
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6AYySNe0mJCTTd0Sll4NVhZMGs/edit?usp=sharing