Blood Test to Diagnose Skin Cancer May Help Avoid Invasive Skin Biopsies

Melanoma is one of the most aggressive skin cancers due to its potential to metastasize widely in the body. The risk of metastasis is increased with later detection and increased thickness of the primary lesion, thus early identification/surgical removal is critical for higher survival rates. Recent advances in liquid biopsy have proposed less-invasive alternatives for cancer diagnosis and monitoring using minimal invasion at sample collection, and circulating tumor cells (CTCs) have been considered a promising blood-based surrogate marker of primary tumors. Now, new research indicates that testing an individual’s blood can reveal the presence of CTCs. Such tests may allow patients to forego invasive skin biopsies to determine whether they have skin cancer.

For applications in treatment monitoring, researchers at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI, USA) investigated melanoma CTC quantification and molecular profiling using a novel microfluidic device, MelanoBean (MB) chip. The MB chip is a newly optimized platform of the previously reported OncoBean microfluidic device for melanoma. The researchers showed that the test, which uses the Melanoma-specific OncoBean platform conjugated with melanoma-specific antibodies, can be used not only to diagnose melanoma but also to evaluate whether all cancer cells have been successfully removed after skin cancer surgery.

"This is the first comprehensive study of circulating tumor cells - or CTCs - to evaluate the efficacy of surgery using microfluidic systems in melanoma, including changes in the number of CTCs, CTC cluster configuration, and gene expression profiling,” said first author, Yoon-Tae Kang, PhD.

“CTCs have the potential to pinpoint treatment resistance and recurrence, and can be a valuable biomarker to non-invasively monitor for disease progression,” added corresponding author Sunitha Nagrath, PhD.

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