Aim
To detect of colorectal cancer (CRC) circulating tumour cells (CTCs) surface antigens, we present an assay incorporating cadmium selenide quantum dots (QDs) in these paper.
Conclusion
The method described here can be easily adjusted for any other protein target of either the CTC or the host.
Methods
The principle of the assay is the immunomagnetic separation of CTCs from body fluids in conjunction with QDs, using specific antibody biomarkers: epithelial cell adhesion molecule antibody, and monoclonal cytokeratin 19 antibody. The detection signal was acquired from the fluorescence signal of QDs. For the evaluation of the performance, the method under study was used to isolate the human colon adenocarcinoma cell line (DLD-1) and CTCs from CRC patients' peripheral blood.
Results
The minimum detection limit of the assay was defined to 10 DLD-1 CRC cells/mL as fluorescence was measured with a spectrofluorometer. Fluorescence-activated cell sorting analysis and Real Time RT-PCR, they both have also been used to evaluate the performance of the described method. In