Assessment of Imaging Mass Cytometry (IMC) as a Tool to Characterize Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) in Preclinical Mouse Models.

ABSTRACT: Circulating tumor cells (CTCs), and especially CTC-clusters, are linked to poor prognosis and may reveal mechanisms of metastasis and treatment resistance. Therefore, developing unbiased methods for the functional characterization of CTCs in liquid biopsies is an urgent need. Here, we present an evaluation of multiplex imaging mass cytometry (IMC) to analyze CTCs in mice with human xenograft tumors. In a single-step process, IMC uses metal-labeled antibodies to simultaneously detect a large number of proteins/modifications within minimally manipulated small volumes of blood from the tail vein or heart. We used breast cancer cell lines and a patient-derived xenograft (PDX) to assess antibodies for cross-species interpretation. Along with manual verification, HALO-AI-based cell segmentation

SUBMITTER: Pore M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12776163 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature