RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Simultaneous Detection and HER2 Profiling of Circulating Breast Cancer Cells in Clinical Patients Using a Rare Cell Sorter JF Anticancer Research JO Anticancer Res FD International Institute of Anticancer Research SP 4879 OP 4886 DO 10.21873/anticanres.15993 VO 42 IS 10 A1 MORI, TOMOKO A1 FURUKAWA, ATSUKO A1 BILAL, TURAN A1 UEDA, AYA A1 BANDO, HIROKO A1 MASUDA, TAISUKE A1 ARAI, FUMIHITO A1 MATSUSAKA, SATOSHI YR 2022 UL http://ar.iiarjournals.org/content/42/10/4879.abstract AB Background/Aim: This study describes a rare cell sorter (RCS) method to detect circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and CTC clusters in whole blood without pretreatment. Patients and Methods: We collected samples from breast cancer patients at the University of Tsukuba Hospital. A total of 15 whole-blood specimens from patients with breast cancer were collected and analyzed via a microfluidics chip, fluorescence-conjugated antibody staining, and fluorescence microscopy. Of 15 total cases, eight were analyzed by RCS ver3 and seven were analyzed by RCS ver3.5 to reveal potential clinical differences in scanning methods. We then examined the HER2 status on 4 of the 15 patients using our RCS system. Results: RCS efficiently detected all subtypes of CTCs and CTC clusters from the peripheral blood of cancer patients. The concordance rate of HER2 status between tissue and CTCs in 4 tested clinical samples was 100%. Conclusion: RCS is a non-invasive method that allows for simultaneous detection of CTCs, cluster presence, and surface marker (e.g., HER2) status. Frequent sampling is, thus, possible and the large amount of data obtained will be clinically useful to predict response to therapy as well as plan adjunct support therapies in cancer patients.