Gelatin Nanoparticle-Coated Silicon Beads for Density-Selective Capture and Release of Heterogeneous Circulating Tumor Cells with High Purity

Background: Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are a burgeoning topic in cancer biomarker discovery research with minimal invasive blood draws. CTCs can be used as potential biomarkers for disease prognosis, early cancer diagnosis and pharmacodynamics. However, the extremely low abundance of CTCs limits their clinical utility because of technical challenges such as the isolation and subsequent detailed molecular and functional characterization of rare CTCs from patient blood samples.