CTC Biomarkers for Breast Cancer Diagnostics

Introduction of Circulating Tumor Cells

Breast cancer (BC) is usually an incurable disease with a high mortality rate. Therefore, early identification of metastatic features and disease recurrence by precise biomarkers is of paramount importance. Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are a collective term for all types of tumor cells present in peripheral blood. CTCs detach from primary tumors, move to distant organs through blood vessels, and undergo adhesion, migration, and metastasis. Most CTCs are cleared from circulation, and a small fraction of CTCs have the potential to seed active tumor metastases or remain dormant to be activated later to form overt metastases. CTCs consisting of heterogeneous subpopulations with different morphology and genetic, epigenetic, and gene expression profiles represent promising candidate biomarkers for metastatic potential.

Fig. 1. CTC Clusters in Breast Cancer Dissemination. (Fridrichova I, et al., 2023)

CTC Biomarkers Development Services

Alfa Cytology is a leading preclinical CRO company with extensive experience in BC basic research and biomarkers development. CTC detection is to capture trace amounts of CTCs in peripheral blood and monitor the trend of changes in CTC types and numbers, to monitor tumor dynamics in real-time, evaluate treatment effects, and achieve real-time individual treatment. With advanced technology and a professional team, we can provide BC diagnostic biomarkers development services, including CTC biomarkers development for BC diagnostics. Our services include,

• CTC enrichment, separation, and recovery

The CTC enrichment strategy focuses on increasing the number of captured tumor cells and obtaining high-purity CTCs. Due to the rarity of CTCs in blood, our expert team is using new technologies and devices such as microfluidics, immunomagnetic-based positive enrichment, microfluidic size, and deformation-based strategies to achieve enrichment of CTCs in a highly sensitive manner.

• CTC identification

We have scientific and professional CTC identification technologies, such as fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), immunofluorescence (IF) staining, RT-PCR, targeted sequencing, single-cell sequencing, etc.

Applications of CTC in BC

• Diagnosis and early detection
• Prognosis and recurrence assessment
• Postoperative monitoring
• Chemotherapy response

Advantages of Our Services

• Customized services to meet customer needs
• Perfect advanced CTC research platform
• Extensive experience in BC CTC biomarker discovery and development
• Efficient and perfect after-sales service

Alfa Cytology has a professional team, an authoritative research platform, and rich experience in the development of CTC biomarkers. The number of CTCs in the blood of BC patients is very small, but CTCs can accurately detect the number of BC cells in the blood. CTC sampling is convenient, and its correlation and sensitivity are much higher than other detection items. It is an important index for early detection and diagnosis of breast cancer. If you are interested in learning more about our BC diagnostic development services, please feel free to contact us. Our professional and patient staff will get in touch with you as soon as possible.