Gastric Cancer-Circulating Tumor Cells Isolation by Folic Acid Immunolipid Magnetic Beads and Clinical Application

Abstract

CTCs plays a significant role in tumor prognosis, treatment and metastasis diagnosis, but CTCs isolation and enrichment with low concentrations is a critical step in early diagnosis and needs to be studied urgently. In this study, the use of folic acid-modified lipid magnetic spheres was used to separate GC-CTCs, and the correlation between CTCs counts and parameters, indicators, and prognosis recorded in clinical patients with gastric cancer was investigated. In our study, it was found that there were 26 benign patients with no CTC detected in their peripheral blood. Among 40 gastric cancer patients, CTC was detected, that is, CTC positive in 35 cases (the positive rate was 87.5%). At the same time, by analyzing the parameters recorded in clinical patients, it was found that the CTC positive was related to clinical stage, but not with patient age, histopathological type, and pathological grade. In addition, we also confirmed that the folic acid lipid magnetic spheres prepared by us can effectively separate GC-CTCs, and confirmed that the CTCs level was correlated with clinical stage, and the degree of progression is related to the clinical stage of gastric cancer patients: Samples with high CTC detection had shorter PFS. This study proves that folic acid lipid magnetic spheres can effectively separate gastric cancer CTCs, which is a reliable auxiliary means for the comprehensive diagnosis.