Background: Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in blood circulation may play a role in monitoring and even in early detection of metastasis patients. Due to the limited presence of CTCs in blood circulation, viable CTCs isolation technology must supply a very high recovery rate.
Methods: Here, we implement design of experiments (DOE) methodology in order to optimize the Bio-Ferrography (BF) immunomagnetic isolation (IMI) procedure for the EGFR high positive CTCs application. All consequent DOE phases such as screening design, optimization experiments and validation experiments were used.
Results: A significant recovery rate of more than 95% was achieved while isolating 100 EGFR high positive CTCs from 1 mL human whole blood.
Conclusions: The recovery achievement in this research positions BF technology as one of the most efficient IMI technologies, which is ready to be challenged with patients' blood samples.
Keywords: EGFR; bio-ferrography; carcinoma; design of experiments; flow cytometry; immunomagnetic isolation.
© 2015 International Clinical Cytometry Society.