University of Missouri, Department of Biological Engineering, Columbia, Missouri 65212, USA.
J Biomed Opt. 2012 Jun;17(6):061221. doi: 10.1117/1.JBO.17.6.061221.
Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer, yet current diagnostic methods are unable to detect early onset of metastatic disease. Patients must wait until macroscopic secondary tumors form before malignancy can be diagnosed and treatment prescribed. Detection of cells that have broken off the original tumor and travel through the blood or lymph system can provide data for diagnosing and monitoring metastatic disease. By irradiating enriched blood samples spiked with cultured melanoma cells with nanosecond duration laser light, we induced photoacoustic responses in the pigmented cells. Thus, we can detect and enumerate melanoma cells in blood samples to demonstrate a paradigm for a photoacoustic flow cytometer. Furthermore, we capture the melanoma cells using microfluidic two phase flow, a technique that separates a continuous flow into alternating microslugs of air and blood cell suspension. Each slug of blood cells is tested for the presence of melanoma. Slugs that are positive for melanoma, indicated by photoacoustic waves, are separated from the cytometer for further purification and isolation of the melanoma cell. In this paper, we evaluate the two phase photoacoustic flow cytometer for its ability to detect and capture metastatic melanoma cells in blood.
黑色素瘤是皮肤癌中最致命的一种，但目前的诊断方法无法检测到转移性疾病的早期发作。患者必须等到宏观继发性肿瘤形成后，才能诊断恶性肿瘤并开出治疗方案。检测从原始肿瘤脱落并通过血液或淋巴系统传播的细胞，可以为诊断和监测转移性疾病提供数据。通过用纳秒持续时间的激光照射掺入培养的黑色素瘤细胞的富集血液样本，我们在色素细胞中诱导光声响应。因此，我们可以检测和计数血液样本中的黑色素瘤细胞，展示光声流动细胞仪的范例。此外，我们使用微流控两相同步流捕获黑色素瘤细胞，该技术将连续流动分离为交替的空气微片和血细胞悬浮液。每个血细胞微片都经过检测是否存在黑色素瘤。通过光声波指示为黑色素瘤阳性的微片与细胞仪分离，以进一步纯化和分离黑色素瘤细胞。在本文中，我们评估了两相光声流动细胞仪检测和捕获血液中转移性黑色素瘤细胞的能力。
