Maintrac technology for counting and analysing CTCs - Dr. Joachim Fluhrer & Prof. Katharina Pachmann
In this Genostics videocast, Dr. Joachim Fluhrer and Prof. Katharina Pachmann discuss the science of Maintrac technology for counting and analysing Circulating Tumour Cells.
Dr. Joachim Fluhrer: So what is Maintrac, and how does Maintrac differ from other test methods?
Prof. Katharina Pachmann: The most important thing is that we do not isolate primarily the cells, we just detect them.
in order to count numbers of CTCs in the blood, many methods aim to separate the tumour cells from the blood. This procedure, called 'enrichment' may mean that some CTCs may remain undetected.
Prof. Katharina Pachmann: We detect them amongst the other white blood cells, we do not perform any enrichment procedure other than lysing (destroying) the red blood cells.
"Immunofluorescent staining extracts more information about malignant profile, metastatic potential of CTCs, and the extent to which CTCs are genetically identical to the primary tumor." (Sun YF et. al)
All that is needed is a 15-20mL sample of blood, which is sent to the Maintrac laboratory in Germany. Please note that the Genostics Maintrac tests can only be requested by a certified, registered healthcare practitioner
Prof. Katharina Pachmann: And then we can detect the cells by image analysis and count them by image analysis. The important thing is that not all epithelial cells in the blood are necessarily tumour cells. There are other situations where epithelial cells can get into the blood and nobody is capable from telling from just the surface antigen expression or even from mRNA expression whether it is a tumour cell or not. This would only be possible if we were able to to detect mutations in these cells which are also present in the tumour. We are doing the first steps in this direction but unless you cannot detect a defined mutation, it is not possible to tell definitively whether a EpCAM-positive cell in the blood is from the tumour or not.
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