Parylene membrane slot filter for the capture, analysis and culture of viable circulating tumor cells

This paper presents a method of capturing viable circulating tumor cells (CTC) from human whole blood using constant-pressure-driven filtration through a specially designed parylene-C membrane "slot" filter. More than 90% viable cancer cells could be recovered from whole blood using the slot filter, with minimal non-cancer blood cells left on the filter. The feasibility of the telomerase activity measurement of a single cancer cell taken from the filter after capture was proven. The on-filter and off-filter cultures of the captured cancer cells were also demonstrated.