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Usage Information

Sensitive and easy screening for circulating tumor cells by flow cytometry
Alexia Lopresti, Fabrice Malergue, François Bertucci, Maria Lucia Liberatoscioli, Severine Garnier, Quentin DaCosta, Pascal Finetti, Marine Gilabert, Jean Luc Raoul, Daniel Birnbaum, Claire Acquaviva, Emilie Mamessier
Alexia Lopresti, Fabrice Malergue, François Bertucci, Maria Lucia Liberatoscioli, Severine Garnier, Quentin DaCosta, Pascal Finetti, Marine Gilabert, Jean Luc Raoul, Daniel Birnbaum, Claire Acquaviva, Emilie Mamessier
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Resource and Technical Advance Oncology

Sensitive and easy screening for circulating tumor cells by flow cytometry

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Abstract

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) provide easy, repeatable, and representative access to information regarding solid tumors. However, their detection remains difficult because of their paucity, their short half-life, and the lack of reliable surface biomarkers. Flow cytometry (FC) is a fast, sensitive, and affordable technique, ideal for rare-cell detection. Adapted to CTC detection (i.e., extremely rare cells), most FC-based techniques require a time-consuming pre-enrichment step, followed by a 2-hour staining procedure, impeding the efficiency of CTC detection. We overcame these caveats and reduced the procedure to less than 1 hour, with minimal manipulation. First, cells were simultaneously fixed, permeabilized, and then stained. Second, using low-speed FC acquisition conditions and 2 discriminators (cell size and pan-cytokeratin expression), we suppressed the pre-enrichment step. Applied to blood from donors with or without known malignant diseases, this protocol ensures a high recovery of the cells of interest independently of their epithelial-mesenchymal plasticity and can predict which samples are derived from cancer donors. This proof-of-concept study lays the bases of a sensitive tool to detect CTCs from a small amount of blood upstream of in-depth analyses.

Authors

Alexia Lopresti, Fabrice Malergue, François Bertucci, Maria Lucia Liberatoscioli, Severine Garnier, Quentin DaCosta, Pascal Finetti, Marine Gilabert, Jean Luc Raoul, Daniel Birnbaum, Claire Acquaviva, Emilie Mamessier

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Usage data is cumulative from June 2025 through June 2026.

Usage JCI PMC
Text version 1,962 542
PDF 288 129
Figure 777 14
Table 100 0
Supplemental data 142 23
Citation downloads 215 0
Totals 3,484 708
Total Views 4,192
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Usage information is collected from two different sources: this site (JCI) and Pubmed Central (PMC). JCI information (compiled daily) shows human readership based on methods we employ to screen out robotic usage. PMC information (aggregated monthly) is also similarly screened of robotic usage.

Various methods are used to distinguish robotic usage. For example, Google automatically scans articles to add to its search index and identifies itself as robotic; other services might not clearly identify themselves as robotic, or they are new or unknown as robotic. Because this activity can be misinterpreted as human readership, data may be re-processed periodically to reflect an improved understanding of robotic activity. Because of these factors, readers should consider usage information illustrative but subject to change.

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