关键词:
circulating tumor cells
cell imprinting
hydrogels
interfaces
enrichment
摘要:
Circulating tumor cells (CTC) have emerged as crucial mediators in the metastatic cascade, offering invaluable insights as real-time liquid biomarkers for cancer progression, prognosis, and treatment response. Their exceptionally low concentration in peripheral blood, which typically ranges from a handful to a few dozen cells per milliliter amidst billions of background blood cells, poses formidable challenges for isolation and molecular characterization. Despite this, the efficient and specific capture of CTC holds tremendous potential for revolutionizing early cancer detection, dynamic monitoring of therapeutic efficacy, and guiding personalized treatment strategies. Currently, the primary technologies for CTC enrichment fall into two categories: immunoaffinity-based methods that employ antibodies targeting epithelial surface markers such as epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM), and label-free approaches that leverage physical properties including cell size, deformability, and density, exemplified by membrane filtration and centrifugal techniques. However, these conventional methods are hampered by several inherent limitations, including high operational costs, dependence on highly variable surface antigen expression, insufficient capture specificity leading to low purity, and significant interference from heterogeneous blood components such as leukocytes and platelets. Consequently, there is an urgent and growing need to develop novel functional materials and platforms that offer enhanced selectivity, robust stability in physiological conditions, excellent biocompatibility, and improved clinical applicability for the effective isolation and analysis of CTC. In this study, we innovatively integrate cell imprinting technology with a rational amino acid-based affinity strategy to develop a tryptophan-histidine-arginine (WHR) tripeptide-functionalized cell-imprinted hydrogel for highly efficient and selective capture of CTC. The design leverages the unique prope