Circulating tumor cell clusters more likely to cause metastasis than single cells — ScienceDaily
“While CTCs are considered to be precursors of metastasis, the significance of CTC clusters, which are readily detected using devices developed here at MGH, has remained elusive,” says Shyamala Maheswaran, PhD, of the MGH Cancer Center, co-senior author of the Cell paper. “Our findings that the presence of CTC clusters in the blood of cancer patients is associated with poor prognosis may identify a novel and potentially targetable step in the blood-borne spread of cancer.” In their experiments the team used two versions of a microfluidic device called the CTC-Chip — both developed at the MGH Center for Engineering in Medicine — that captures CTCs from blood samples in ways that make the cells accessible for scientific testing. One version — the HBCTC-Chip — can efficiently capture extremely rare CTCs in a blood sample…