In the Cell Puncher Pro project (Interreg project# 102183) a demonstrator will be developed and validated to enable analysis of all individual Circulating Tumor Cells (CTC) to guide cancer therapy. Personalized cancer treatment based on the tumor composition (proteins, DNA and RNA) will become the standard in the next ten years. This requires solutions to determine the tumor composition at multiple time points during the course of therapy. The most cost effective and patient friendly method to obtain the tumor composition is to draw a tube of blood (7.5ml) from a patient and analyze its CTC. In contrast to a tumor biopsy, which can often only be taken once or not at all, a liquid tumor biopsy can be taken at several moments during the treatment and guide a therapy. VyCAP B.V has developed a solution, which is compatible with commercial CTC enrichment instruments to analyze single cells. The CTC enriched sample is processed by the Cell Puncher Pro
platform to select, isolate and analyze all CTC to guide the therapy.
The Puncher is currently at TRL 4 and will be further developed by the consortium to TRL 7 which should be ready by mid-2020. After a successful validation at the Heinrich Heine University Hospital in Düsseldorf, it will be introduced to other clinics. The Hospital in Dusseldorf is the expert in the analysis of CTC. The validation in the clinic will be performed using blood samples of end stage small cell lung and prostate cancer patients, to ensure sufficient amount of CTC (5-100/7.5ml).
Within the INTERREG program, the consortium will:
• Develop and design the Cell Puncher Pro demonstrator towards TRL-7
• Transfer the manufacturing of the cell isolation chip towards Micronit’s Foundry in Dortmund, Germany
• Improve the plastic disposables at JB Ventures, Nijverdal, the Netherlands
• Validate the Cell Puncher Pro using blood samples of patients with extensive cancer disease that are treated at the UMCG Groningen (NL), UK Munster and Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf
