Pillalamarri Srikrishnarka
Chennai, India: Circulating tumor cells travel from tumor throughout the body and create colonies in different parts of the body leading to recurrence of cancer. This process is also known as metastasis. Imaging these traversing cancer cells and in vivo destroying them without affecting the other cells of the body could potentially prevent the recurrence of cancer.
In this regard there are reported routes of in-vivo capturing these CTC and preventing them from traveling. Of which, inserting of a temporary microchip inside the body which harvests these CTs for extended periods of time. Since the chip is very small in size, the amount of blood harvesting is very small and is time consuming. The other method is by injecting magnetic nanoparticles which interact with these CTs and subsequently captured by controlling the magnetic field. In the third method, an implant typically that has been biofunctionalized is placed inside the body that can capture these CTs and prevent them from spreading throughout the body and initiate the formation of colonies.
To address some of the difficulties faced during the capturing of CTs, recently Wang and co-workers from the Southern University of Science and Technology utilized a functionalized flexible catheter having electrospun nanofibers for capturing these CTs. A liquid metal-polymer conductor was first sprayed onto the catheter and was the surface was sealed using a sealant which helped in making the surface conducting. The top surface of the catheter was given positive potential and the bottom layer was applied with a negative potential. This catheter was used a substrate for collecting electrospun nanofibers in such a way that, as the catheter enters the body, the fiber coating dosen’t get damaged.
The surface of the nanofibers were further functionalized to make them biosafe. These fibers acted as a net to capture all the floating CTs and they were killed by applying potential. They found that around 48 % of the CTs were captured in the presence of the electrospun nanofibers and without the coating it was just 2 %.
“The blood vessel in the LM/NF-catheter group still remained unobstructed and was functioning well. No noticeable morphological changes of the major organs were observed, indicating that there was no observable toxicity or side effects.” claimed the authors.
”As we have set the voltage for IRE at a low level, only the cells on the surface of the catheter can be killed, and the IRE could not damage the cells 1 mm away from the catheter. Even though some blood cells are on the surface of the catheter and killed by IRE, this small amount of hemolysis will not significantly affect the normal physiological function of the body.”- was observed by the authors.
This work was concluded by “this project can provide an alternative method for reducing the load of CTCs and other harmful exosomes in patients and has a broad prospect in clinical application to prevent tumor metastasis and recurrence.”
These results were published in ACS NANO (10.1021/acsnano.1c09807)