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Beyond counting tumor cells

Nature Biotechnology volume 30, pages 578–580 (2012)Cite this article

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An Erratum to this article was published on 07 December 2012

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Since the discovery of circulating tumor cells in 1869, researchers have been able to do little else beyond count them. This is about to change, as advanced technologies for harvesting and analyzing rare cells from blood are opening the window for characterization. Jim Kling reports.

In May, a group of researchers from Stanford University and their collaborators succeeded in profiling individual circulating tumor cells (CTC)1—cells that break away from primary tumors and enter the bloodstream. This work addressed two issues plaguing the field since its inception: analyzing tumor cells against a backdrop of contaminating leukocytes, and dealing with the heterogeneity of cells derived from single tumors. Using an enrichment device developed at their institution2 (licensed to San Diego–based Illumina) and a microfluidic chip-based reverse transcriptase–PCR assay3 (commercialized by Fluidigm of S. San Francisco), the group profiled 87 genes in 510 single cells from 50 breast cancer patients, finding variability not only between patients but within individual patient's cells, not seen in similarly analyzed cultured tumor cells.

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Figure 1: CTCs in the spotlight.

Change history

  • 07 December 2012

    In the version of the article originally published, On-Q-Ity platform was called by its previous and outdated name, C5 (Circulating Cancer and Charactization Chip). It should have been called OnQChip. The error has been corrected in the HMTL and PDF versions of the article.

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  1. Bellingham, Washington

    Jim Kling

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Kling, J. Beyond counting tumor cells. Nat Biotechnol 30, 578–580 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.2295

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