Flow Enabled Target Capture Halbach‐based magnetic enrichment increases circulating tumor cell capture from blood in metastatic cancer patients

The clinical implementation of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) as a predictive tool for therapy efficacy in the growing field of precision oncology likely requires advanced CTC phenotyping. While their predictive value for disease progression and therapy response has extensively been shown, the low number of CTCs that are obtained from whole blood tubes limits their clinical application. The magnetic enrichment of CTCs using the FDA-cleared CellSearch system is limited by the expression of the epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM) on CTC, and an increase in CTC yield may be obtained through enhanced capture of low EpCAM expressing cells. In this study, we compared the Flow Enabled Target Capture Halbach (FETCH) magnetic enrichment technology with the FDA-cleared CellSearch system for CTC capture using paired blood samples from 34 patients with non-small-cell lung, breast, and prostate cancer. Results show a statistically significant median 1.5-fold increase in CTCs captured with the FETCH system compared with CellSearch, accompanied by a median twofold reduction in non-specifically captured leukocytes. This increase in CTC capture can aid the comprehensive analysis of CTCs in a larger number of patients, further supporting clinical implementation of CTC-based diagnostics.