Liquid biopsy is a promising approach for personalized cancer theranostics. In particular, circulating tumour cells (CTCs) provide crucial information for prognosis and therapy decisions. This study demonstrates the development of the OPENchip platform, which combines microfluidic technology and in situ molecular profiling to analyze single CTCs. The OPENchip enriches epithelial CTCs and uses padlock probes to identify specific biomarkers relevant to cancer diagnostics. This allows for the creation of rolling circle amplification product libraries. The platform’s capture efficiency and purity were validated using different cell lines. The molecular analysis of CTCs from metastatic breast cancer (HER2 (ERBB2) gene expression and PIK3CA mutations) and metastatic pancreatic cancer (KRAS gene mutations) was demonstrated without any off-chip processes. These results highlight the potential for early molecular detection of cancer using sequencing-free liquid biopsy.-Scientific Journal cover design by scapiens

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2020/lc/c9lc01248f#!divAbstract