ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2018
Functional profiling of circulating tumor cells with an integrated vortex capture and single-cell protease activity assay.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 52 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
52 citing papers in PubMed, 132 citations in OpenAlex.
- Progressive Hypoxia Exacerbates Breast Cancer Metastasis by Paracrine Modulation of the Blood-brain Barrier Endothelium.Journal of molecular neuroscience : MN · 2026Article
- Cytokine-Engineered Chimeric Antigen Receptor-T Cell Therapy: How to Balance the Efficacy and Toxicity.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Review
- Circulating Tumor Cells for the Monitoring of Lung Cancer Therapies.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Review
- Evaluation of single-cell heterogeneity and invasive potential in cancer cells via secreted protease activity assay.Analytica chimica acta · 2025Article
- Epigenetic drivers of metalloproteinases and metastasis.Trends in cell biology · 2025Review
- In-Line Enrichment of Cancer Cells from Whole Blood by Cell Self-Organization in Acoustic Fields.Analytical chemistry · 2025Article
- Advances in microfluidic platforms for tumor cell phenotyping: from bench to bedside.Lab on a chip · 2025Review
- Challenges and future perspectives for high-throughput chimeric antigen receptor T cell discovery.Current opinion in biotechnology · 2024Review
- Passive Droplet Microfluidic Platform for High-Throughput Screening of Microbial Proteolytic Activity.Analytical chemistry · 2024Article
- Emerging paradigms in cancer cell plasticity.BMB reports · 2024Review
- Genetic and phenotypic profiling of single living circulating tumor cells from patients with microfluidics.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Vortex sorting of rare particles/cells in microcavities: A review.Biomicrofluidics · 2024Review
- Article
- Liquid biopsy to personalize treatment for metastatic prostate cancer.American journal of translational research · 2024Review
- Review
- Chemically-Modified Sepharose 6B Beads for Collection of Circulating Tumor Cells.Biomolecules · 2023Article
- Integrated "lab-on-a-chip" microfluidic systems for isolation, enrichment, and analysis of cancer biomarkers.Lab on a chip · 2023Review
- The roles of proteases in prostate cancer.IUBMB life · 2023Review
- Polyphyllin VII induces CTC anoikis to inhibit lung cancer metastasis through EGFR pathway regulation.International journal of biological sciences · 2023Article
- The molecular mechanisms and therapeutic strategies of EMT in tumor progression and metastasis.Journal of hematology & oncology · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Tumor cells are hypothesized to use proteolytic enzymes to facilitate invasion. Whether circulating tumor cells (CTCs) secrete these enzymes to aid metastasis is unknown. A quantitative and high-throughput approach to assay CTC secretion is needed to address this question. We developed an integrated microfluidic system that concentrates rare cancer cells >100,000-fold from 1 mL of whole blood into ∼50,000 2-nL drops composed of assay reagents within 15 min. The system isolates CTCs by size, exchanges fluid around CTCs to remove contaminants, introduces a matrix metalloprotease (MMP) substrate, and encapsulates CTCs into microdroplets. We found CTCs from prostate cancer patients possessed above baseline levels of MMP activity (1.7- to 200-fold). Activity of CTCs was generally higher than leukocytes from the same patient (average CTC/leukocyte MMP activity ratio, 2.6 ± 1.5). Higher MMP activity of CTCs suggests active proteolytic processes that may facilitate invasion or immune evasion and be relevant phenotypic biomarkers enabling companion diagnostics for anti-MMP therapies.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.