Immunomagnetic Lipid Separation and Plastin Identification for Pancreatic Cancer Cells and Its Clinical Application

Circulating tumour cells isolated from the peripheral blood of patients have the advantage of being non-invasive. The aim of this study was to develop an effective method for detecting pancreatic cancer micrometastasis from peripheral blood and explore the clinical application value of the separation of circulating pancreatic cancer cells using epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM) lipid magnetic spheres (ELMS) and plastin monoclonal antibody for identification. The pancreatic cancer PANC-1 cells were respectively added to phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) and fresh blood provided by healthy volunteers to detect cell recovery using ELMS. Moreover, trials were conducted using nude mice with tumour and samples from patients with pancreatic cancer to evaluate the effect of CTC isolation and identification. The prepared ELMS captured PANC-1 cells from blood with high efficiency, which was similar to the efficiency obtained with nude mice with tumour and the samples from patients with pancreatic cancer, in agreement with the clinical test results. This study is based on the high efficiency of the EpCAM magnetic nanolipid sphere separation system capturing CTC of pancreatic cancer, which provides a strong support for investigating pancreatic cancer, in terms of its early diagnosis, preoperative and post-operative analysis and analysing the treatment effects.